Chief Secretary to the Treasury Danny Alexander has just emailed Liberal Democrat members with a message about this week’s Comprehensive Spending Review.
Here’s the full text:
When we came into office, we inherited an economy that was on the brink. With the largest budget deficit in Europe and no plan for tackling it, Britain faced huge economic risks. These could only be dealt with by a clear plan to deal rapidly with the worst financial position this country has faced for generations.
On Wednesday, we set out that plan. And while the scale and pace of the action we need to take is unavoidable, we can choose how we do it. The Spending Review sets out those choices:
It may have been a “miserable little compromise” back in April but AV would now appear to be the big prize. The coalition has to hold together, whatever the cost, at least long enough to allow a vote on electoral reform. But will the way we get from here to there impact significantly upon what happens when we get there?
Only those on the inside know what’s actually happening, but there are many competing readings of how things are playing out coalition-wise.
The most challenging reading for many Lib Dems is that the displays of unity between the coalition partners are …
There are serious cross-border criminals at large in Europe damaging the lives of innocent people. A certain numbers of them are more likely to be dealt with when a European Public Prosecutor is created. The British Government needs to escape the defensive dug-out epitomised by Blair’s “red lines” and fight for the good that co-operation in Europe can bring for all our people. This is a time for leadership.
A federal public prosecutor is provided for in the Treaty of Lisbon with a distinct emphasis on financial crime. I use the f-word, federal, because while it has …
As I write, Chris Bryant is arguing during the Whole House committee for the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill that a method for drawing up constituency boundaries that is severely confined by a mathematical formula is misguided.
I completely agree, although possibly for a different reason to the one he uses to support his argument.
Mr Bryant has been arguing that a strict mathematical formula will have to ignore natural geographical and physical boundaries.
It’s true: to bring in the Bill as it stands will create constituencies that are almost constantly shifting and where previously combined communities may very well find themselves …
The effect of the ‘savage’ cuts as Nick Clegg called them last September are gradually becoming apparent over the course of the week. What both parts of the coalition insist is that these cuts are about deficit reduction and not a deliberate effort to roll back the state. There is a major aspect to these cuts however which are making this very difficult to believe.
If cuts were purely to balance the books, and the economic forecasts of the coalition were correct, there would come a time possibly during a hypothetical second parliament when some of the cuts could …
There has been a lot of talk over the last few months about the Coalition’s plans for social housing. Much has been written, and most of it has been wrong, as illustrated by Dominic Curran’s piece on Lib Dem Voice yesterday. This piece is intended to explain what we are actually doing, rather than what the Labour party, and their friends in the media want you to think we’re doing.
Firstly, we will be increasing social housing supply by more each year than Labour achieved in thirteen years added together. That’s because Labour sold off almost as many houses as …
By David Thorpe
| Thu 21st October 2010 - 11:03 am
The recent comments from Bank Of England Governor Mevyn King , regarding the possibility of quantitative easing make little sense in the context of the Coalition’s current economic strategy and are contrary to broad Lib Dem principals.
The pre-election debate on the economy centred on whether the recovery was strong enough at present to sustain cuts, it is the opinion of Lib Dems, and a view I agree with, that the economy is strong enough to sustain such an action.
This view can be boiled down to believing that the level of aggregate demand in the economy has reached a point …
It’s not unusual for me to be less than impressed with Parliamentary debates on election law matters as so many of those deciding on what legislation should say have so many large gaps in their own knowledge. It’s particularly galling where the subject under debate is something piloted in the long-running series of electoral pilots under Tony Blair – because you get MPs who voted to spend money on the pilots then, a few years later, debating the same topics without any apparent knowledge that the pilots took place or what lessons were learnt from them.
I commented yesterday on the good deal Chris Huhne has got for environmental spending (due to go up by a fifth in cash terms over the spending review period). The best settlement for any ministerial area however looks to have been secured for Sarah Teather’s early years education brief – assisted by Nick Clegg’s own repeated insistence on prioritising the area.
Here’s what Sarah Teather wrote yesterday to fellow MPs about the education settlement:
Today’s Comprehensive Spending Review involved some very difficult decisions that we had to take to deal with the black hole in public finances left to us by
By Stephen Tall
| Wed 20th October 2010 - 11:10 pm
Welcome to the Golden Dozen, and our 191st 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 (10th — 16th October, 2010), 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:
Trawling through the details of today’s spending review, Liberal Democrat concerns for the environment look to have got a pretty strong showing, with overall a 21% increase in environmental spending in cash terms during the spending review period. That makes the environment one of the areas to benefit most from the limited amounts of extra spending, and the initiatives include:
A Green Investment Bank – heavily trailed, but going ahead with a capitalisation of £1 billion plus money from asset sales.
Carbon Capture and Storage – at least £1 billion will go on funding a demonstration project.
In the heated pre election days when a Lib Dem and Tory Coalition seemed a remote possibility, there appeared to be few areas of ideological common ground between the parties.
But one area where the parties seemed to agree, and not just the leadership of the parties, but all apparent wings contained within both the future coalition parties, was that there was a need to shrink the size of government.
The recession has given this ideological standpoint a root in pragmatism, and as the Comprehensive Spending review announces cuts to everything from quangos to benefits and prisons, the question must surely be …
Conventional wisdom says that the deficit is all the fault of dodgy lending by the banks. But is it? If there had been no financial crisis, just a correction at the end of a credit bubble, would the deficit have disappeared?
The recession has certainly caused a temporary deficit. We’ve seen a reduction in GDP of about six per cent, and unemployment up to two and a half million. The temporary effects of the recession, a higher spending on benefits and reduced tax revenue, account for around £50bn of the deficit. But this will disappear as the economy recovers.
Unlike last week, when it took me several days to work it out, I could work out what Ed Miliband was trying to do at Prime Minister’s Questions today. Though she is happily on the road to recovery in hospital, the Labour leader skilfully raised the political spectre of Maggie T.
Miliband started by quoting the Justice Secretary, Ken Clarke, about the risk of a “double dip recession”. He asked the PM if Clarke was right – “yes or no?” (which is rapidly turning into Miliband-E’s catchphrase). Cameron very effectively batted that one away by asking Miliband to read out the whole quote from Clarke, which makes clear he was talking about a world recession.
For a moment, it was as if the bottom had fallen out of Miliband’s world just after Cameron had accused him of not having “bottom”). A bit like Enfield and Whitehouse’s characters on Dragon’s Den when one of the dragons asks them a simple but devastating question like “Who is going to buy your pussy cruncher when everyone likes pussies?” and then there is a terrified silence while the two pussy cruncher salesmen start involuntarily pouring perspiration from beneath their armpits. They don’t have an answer.
Well, the only answer Miliband had for Cameron was to ask the same question again. He needed time to think.
Housing is not an issue of Conservatism or Socialism. It is an issue of Humanity
The Conservative Minister for Housing said that. In the 1950s. His name was Harold Macmillan, and he oversaw more than 300,000 homes built every year of that decade, two thirds of which were council homes.
Those words were spoken in a time when there was a consensus that the state should step in where there had been a market failure, and to ensure that everybody who wanted a decent home could afford one. Fast forward fifty years and what has happened that concrete and brick foundation …
The next 12 months will be crucial to the coalition’s promise to reform party funding and ‘take big money out of politics’. An inquiry, to be conducted under the auspices of the Committee on Standards in Public Life, is already underway and will report in spring 2011, to be followed by inter-party talks.
It could be asked whether we need yet another review. Between 2005 and 2007, three separate reviews highlighted the need for reform, with the inter-party talks which followed the Hayden Phillips review in late 2007 coming close to securing agreement. Some, including Phillips himself, have argued …
By Iain Roberts
| Wed 20th October 2010 - 11:12 am
The cuts that will be proposed today by the Coalition Government will not reduce the national debt. Over the next four years, the debt will continue to grow. After four years, if all goes according to plan, it will stop growing. By that time it will already be a lot higher than it is today.
We, as a country, are currently adding £400 million a day to that national debt. That’s £400 million that we, and our children, will need to cover the interest payments on until it’s paid off. For every three pounds the Government raises in tax, it currently …
Here is Nick Clegg’s email to party members about today’s spending review. What’s notable about the content is the strong continuation of the ‘love everything the coalition is doing in public’ line – rather than talking up what is being done differently because Liberal Democrats disagreed with Conservatives.
Notable also is the continuation of Nick’s strong emphasis on the importance of early years education. It is an issue that he has consistently spoken passionately about being one of his priorities even though, as recent events have shown, the party more widely has often preferred to place a great emphasis on other …
Welcome to another in my occasional series on useful, interesting or controversial findings from academic studies. Today’s it is the question of speed cameras, for which a study of international evidence has recently been conducted:
To evaluate the effectiveness of speed cameras, the authors examined all eligible studies, that is, studies that met pre-set standard criteria. We analysed the effect of speed cameras on speeding, road traffic crashes, injuries and deaths by comparing what was happening in road areas before the introduction of speed cameras and after their introduction, and also by analysing what was happening in comparable road areas where no speed cameras were introduced during the study period.
The authors accepted a total of 35 studies for review which met the pre-set criteria. All studies reporting speed outcomes reported a reduction in average speeds post intervention with speed cameras. Speed was also reported as either reductions in the percentage of speeding vehicles (drivers), as percentage speeding reductions over various speed limits, or as reductions in percentages of top end speeders. A reduction in the proportion of speeding vehicles (drivers) over the accepted posted speed limit, ranged from 8% to 70% with most countries reporting reductions in the 10 to 35% range.
Twenty eight studies measured the effect on crashes. All 28 studies found a lower number of crashes in the speed camera areas after implementation of the program. In the vicinity of camera sites, the reductions ranged from 8% to 49% for all crashes, with reductions for most studies in the 14% to 25% range. For injury crashes the decrease ranged between 8% to 50% and for crashes resulting in fatalities or serious injuries the reductions were in the range of 11% to 44%. Effects over wider areas showed reductions for all crashes ranging from 9% to 35%, with most studies reporting reductions in the 11% to to 27% range. For crashes resulting in death or serious injury reductions ranged from 17% to 58%, with most studies reporting this result in the 30% to 40% reduction range. The studies of longer duration showed that these positive trends were either maintained or improved with time.
The quality of the included studies in this review was judged as being of overall moderate quality at best, however, the consistency of reported positive reductions in speed and crash results across all studies show that speed cameras are a worthwhile intervention for reducing the number of road traffic injuries and deaths.
To affirm this finding, higher quality studies, using well designed controlled trials where possible, and studies conducted over adequate length of time (including lengthy follow-up periods) with sufficient data collection points, both before and after the implementation of speed cameras, are needed.
Amendments 265 and 266 to the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill may not have grabbed any headlines but they mark a very welcome change in policy – for under them the fees paid to referendum counting officers will only be paid in full if they meet an adequate standard of performance. Poor performance will now mean less pay.
At the general election, the returning officers in Sheffield and Hackney voluntarily decided to forgo their fees following the major organisational failures in the elections there. However, this was purely a voluntary act as there was no system for judging performance before …
Trial by Jeory has the story from the contest to be Mayor of Tower Hamlets:
Lutfur Rahman’s campaign does seem to have galvanised a section of the Tower Hamlets community and many, if not most, are certainly very angry young people who are fuelled by a fair degree of hatred.
That bitterness has been targeted in almost equal measure at the Labour NEC and the party’s official candidate, Helal Abbas … There are many in the Labour party who believe the level of vitriol is similar to that experienced by Oona King in 2005 when she was beaten by Respect and
The government says £750m ($1.2bn) will be saved over four years on the Trident nuclear deterrent missile system by cutting the number of warheads on each boat from 48 to 40 and reducing the number of missile tubes from 12 to eight. The UK’s nuclear warhead stockpile will be cut from 160 to less than 120. The final “main gate” spending decision on Trident will also be delayed until 2016 – after the next general election.
Party President Ros Scott has emailed party members, saying
At conference I spoke about the importance of retaining our character in coalition and the importance of having distinctive policies to ensure that, come the next election, people remain clear about the Liberal Democrats and what we stand for.
The Browne review on university funding and tuition fees gives us the perfect opportunity to differentiate ourselves from the other parties.
We have campaigned against tuition fees for years, while Labour introduced them and raised them and the Conservatives seek to create a free market model for our universities.
Part of the coalition agreement included allowing the Liberal Democrat MPs to abstain from …
This may come as a shock if you’re a dedicated school governor. You see, I have a confession. I was in a governors’ conference last year and my attention wandered. During the keynote speech, no less. In fact, it didn’t just wander; I found the speaker so baffling that I resorted to doing maths.
I’ve been fascinated – obsessed even – with how you help children from disadvantaged, sometimes chaotic, homes make the progress they should at primary school (I’m Chair of Governors at a Hackney primary school with a culturally rich, but, on the whole, economically challenged intake). Now, obviously, …
Imagine the conversation later this year, somewhere in Whitehall:
Civil servant Good news Minister. Our new arrangements for buying furniture are coming up to the end of their first year and everything is looking really good.
Minister Excellent news. Do you mind letting me have some figures on how the arrangements have performed compared to the previous contracts?
Civil servant I’m terribly sorry Minister, but we haven’t kept all the records of the previous contract.
Minister What about the records just from 2009 then?
The Commonwealth Games ended last week. This probably means that the Commonwealth will not be mentioned in the media for another 4 years. But surely there should be more to the vestiges of the British empire than mere staging of the Commonwealth Games? What does the Commonwealth actually do in this day and age and is it still relevant?
Representing a quarter of the world’s governments, a third of its population and a fifth of global trade, this network of 54 countries is a diverse community. Yet we share many common traits, not least the use of …
That Lord Browne’s conveniently delayed report ‘SECURING A SUSTAINABLE FUTURE FOR HIGHER EDUCATION’ recommends a significant shift for the funding of university teaching from the state to the student or graduate is hardly surprising. Indeed in January 2004 when the introduction of ‘variable fees’ was pushed through the House by Alan Johnson I stated ‘the reality is that by 2009 it will not be possible to go back to a system of state funding our universities with flat-rate fees’.
I genuinely believed that to be the case then and despite the most noble of efforts by the Liberal Democrats to …
I have long thought that Party policy making has tended to be elitist and untransparent. In my own little universe – FPC’s Localism working group – I am keen to change this.
So the papers of the group are now being shared with anyone who put a card in for the Localism debate in Liverpool.
And I will update party members and activists in places like Lib Dem Voice.
We met on 6 October and looked at a new draft of the paper. Our previous thinking is now deeply influenced by the change in the political landscape, not least the Localism Bill due …
London Region Liberal Democrats have announced the candidates for the London Assembly top-up list for the 2012 election. The shortlist is now final and London members will now be issued with a ballot to place the candidates in order of preference.
The candidates, in alphabetical order, are:
Jeremy Ambache (M)
Steve Bradley (M)
Emily Davey (F)
Merlene Emerson (F)*
Bridget Fox (F)
Stephen Knight (M)
Ajmal Masroor (M)*
Caroline Pidgeon (F)
Marisha Ray (F)*
Nick Russell (M)
Shas Sheehan (F)*
Those marked with an asterisk are Black and Minority Ethnic for the purpose of the ethnic preference rule.
There will not be a ballot for the Mayoral candidate for the time being. …
Wondering what to get people for Christmas presents? Here’s a selection of what various Liberal Democrat bloggers suggest:
Jonathan Calder recommends Electric Eden: Unearthing Britain’s Visionary Music by Rob Young: “Anyone with an interest in folk music will find this book engrossing. Young traces the rise of the genre from Cecil Sharp and other Edwardian song collectors like Ralph Vaughan Williams and George Butterworth, through the post-war radialism of Ewan MacColl and Charles Parker, to its electronic heyday in the hands of Fairport Convention and Steeleye Span. He finds the visionary spirit living on in unlikely artists such as …
expats Chris Bowers...Where is that ‘Yesss’ moment going to come from?
It looks like 'from Andy Burnham'.....
Peter Davies Housing is unlikely to be an election winner. Parties for decades have put forward targets for masses of new houses and schemes for bringing existing houses int...
Nick Baird @Jana - so your argument is that the UK shouldn't take *any* refugees, and the burden should fall entirely on countries that happen to neighbour those suffering...
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...
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expats
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Peter Wrigley
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