Tag Archives: coronavirus

Peter Taylor

Local leadership in Watford

By Peter Taylor | Fri 1st May 2020 - 10:03 am

When I was standing to be the Elected Mayor of Watford in 2018, Sir Vince Cable kindly came to help the campaign several times. When asked by local journalists why electing Lib Dems in local government mattered, his answer was always a straightforward one; because up and down the country we provide caring and competent local leadership. During the coronavirus pandemic I have seen Lib Dem-run councils doing just that.

As soon as the scale of this emergency became clear, Watford’s Liberal Democrat councillors and campaigners started to phone hundreds of older residents to ask them if they were alright and to find out what help they might need. This was extremely well received and meant that we were able to identify many people in particular need at a very early stage.

From the very outset it was clear that the whole way the council operated would have to change with many staff moved to new priority areas. Our approach has focused on making sure that our town is caring for all those in need, that key services are maintained, we engage with our residents and that Watford remains as connected and positive as possible.

Many people wanted to know what they could do to support those more vulnerable than themselves during the lockdown. To make sure that local volunteer effort was coordinated and effective we worked with local voluntary groups to set up ‘Watford Helps’. Over 1,000 people have signed up and are helping people to get the food and medicines that they need and making friendly phone calls to those who are lonely or isolated.

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Mark Valladares

Daily View 2×2: 30 April 2020

By Mark Valladares | Thu 30th April 2020 - 7:30 am

2 big stories

So, will Matt Hancock reach his target of 100,000 tests today? And even if that capacity is reached, will they be carried out? It’s not looking terribly optimistic when even NHS Providers, which represents foundation trusts in England, dismisses the 100,000 target as a “red herring” that distracted from the failures of ministers.

Setting targets and missing them is bad enough, but setting meaningless, and possibly even misdirected ones, and msssing them anyway, seems to be the story of this Government’s handling of the crisis.

It’s a sign of the general uselessness of the British print media that, for …

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Mark Valladares

Daily View 2×2: 29 April 2020

By Mark Valladares | Wed 29th April 2020 - 7:30 am

2 big stories

Next steps in addressing the coronavirus crisis? Tracing, an app and?… The Guardian provides an explanation of how the Government plans to step up its battle to quell the virus. But do you trust the Government with data relating to where you’ve gone and who you’ve met? Or is the need to bring this to an end enough to overcome your concerns?

British Airways is making 12,000 staff redundant, a sign of how bad things are likely to get for the airline industry. The share price is down by more than two-thirds, compared to the FTSE 100 …

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Jeanette Sunderland

Stepping up as a Liberal Democrat Councillor in Bradford as part of the response to the national emergency

By Jeanette Sunderland | Mon 27th April 2020 - 3:45 pm

Regular involvement in our local communities meant we could respond quickly to pull local partners together before lock-down was announced. Our Parish Church offered to provide a base for a ‘Community Response Hub’, the Church Secretary took on the role of co-ordinator and other volunteers from the congregation stepped up to run social media. This gave us a flying start in organising a grass-root team offer to local people into which representatives from the Police, a Council Officer and other representatives from local groups met and worked together. We met every day for the first 16 days to make sure …

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NewsHound

Lib Dems lead cross-party call for clarity on coronavirus loan scheme

By NewsHound | Mon 27th April 2020 - 2:23 pm

The Liberal Democrats are leading a cross-party call for the Business Secretary to provide clearer guidance to lenders regarding Business Interruption Loans, following reports that lenders have been slow to approve loans to struggling businesses due to extensive due diligence processes.

Liberal Democrat MP Wera Hobhouse has been joined by over 20 MPs from across the political spectrum in writing to the Business Secretary to call for the additional guidance.

The letter asks that the Government sets out the “minimum level of due diligence required” to underwrite loans, criteria which would enable lenders to process applications at a faster pace. …

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Jon Alexander

Now is the time to stand up as champions of deliberative democracy

By Jon Alexander | Mon 27th April 2020 - 12:47 pm

Our party is back on the right track. Covid seems to have brought us to our senses: the reaction of local parties, of MPs, and of peers to Covid has been impressive, and it does seem that there is a renewal of our central commitment to the idea of the empowered citizen as the most important element in a healthy politics.

The next step is to make ourselves the party of deliberative democracy, and to do so right now, by calling for a Covid Citizens’ Reference Panel to deliberate on and input into government policy as we transition over the …

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Mark Valladares

Daily View 2×2: 27 April 2020

By Mark Valladares | Mon 27th April 2020 - 7:30 am

I hope that you’ve all had a nice weekend, although I guess that, for some of you, each day is beginning to feel the same as the last. At Liberal Democrat Voice, our aim is to entertain, inform and engage, and so I’d better get on, hadn’t I?

2 big stories

Whilst the talk is of what happens next in the UK’s battle against Covid-19, elsewhere, the first steps towards normalisation have started;

In all four places officials caution that life is not going back to normal yet. For one thing, there can be no letting down their guard. The authorities have

…

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Layla Moran MP

Layla Moran writes: Campaign for Coronavirus Compensation Scheme gathers momentum

By Layla Moran MP | Sun 26th April 2020 - 3:12 pm

Over the last four weeks, the numbers of NHS workers losing their lives to Coronavirus have risen. The figure now stands at well over a hundred. And then there are the other frontline workers: bus drivers, carers, teachers, to name but a few, who are risking their lives to help others.

I want to ensure that the Government recognises their bravery and courage. I’ve been calling on them to introduce a Coronavirus Compensation Scheme, to look after the families of frontline workers should the worst happen.

Over 8000 people and 50 cross-party MPs have supported the campaign so far. And this week, I unexpectedly teamed up with The Express, who to their credit, put their weight behind this campaign and are proving instrumental in helping drive this forward.

You can help too. Please sign the petition and share it far and wide.

My campaign has clear asks. This new scheme should mirror the Armed Forces Compensation Scheme and include:

  • a lump sum upfront
  • a guaranteed income for their family
  • child payments to eligible children under 18

This would be in addition to pension benefits. Furthermore, given the extraordinary nature of this crisis, the state should also contribute to funeral costs.

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Bernard Aris

Parliamentary scrutiny of a Unitary Cabinet government during the coronavirus crisis – Part 3

By Bernard Aris | Sun 26th April 2020 - 10:40 am

Read Part 1

Read Part 2

Even in the society of the independent-minded Dutch, a distinct “rallying around the flag” effect can be seen. The leaders of the populist parties questioning established politics (Geert Wilders, PVV, and Thierry Baudet, Forum for Democracy) or the capitalist aspects of Dutch health care and general government (the Socialist Party) used the first new-style plenary Corona debates for sharp, often ad hominem, attacks with overblown rhetoric on Prime Minister Rutte and his ministers. The debate lasted from 14.00 until around 22.00. The Health minister collapsed at the rostrum from overwork and resigned the next day. That scene had a sobering effect on the three attack dogs and when PVV and Forum lost badly in the next weekly poll they toned down the rhetoric and joined the more practical, factual line of arguing of all other parties.

With that toning down of parliamentary politics after the first dramatic debate, the parliamentary party leaders appear to have started a Whatsapp or Zoom group to regularly consult on Corona and other issues.

The Second Chamber Presidium had asked the government around 20 March to supply a list of all Bills (on non-Corona-related issues) they wanted to see being debated and adopted in the coming months. The government sent back a list with 84 Bills; President Khadija Arib immediately saw that 41 of those Bills hadn’t even been introduced to parliament. She sent the list on to the specialist parliamentary committees, who very soon let it be known that there was an impression that, in some cases, the Government was trying to get some controversial big laws passed. President Arib thereupon asked Rutte for Government to review this list, pointing to the limited parliamentary time in Corona times, and asked for a justification for every Bill that the Government really wanted debated.

Reviewing the list of Bills saw parliamentary committees (re)start meeting online, but journalists soon complained they weren’t able to see what happened in those meetings. The Presidium forwarded written summaries of those meetings to the media. But commentators and parliamentary sketchwriters pointed out that in principle all parliamentary sessions should be open to the public and media. And sketchwriters pointed out that every Prime Minister, however popular, even in “interesting times” of high crisis should be subjected to the same parliamentary and media scrutiny as always.

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NewsHound

Lib Dems lead cross party call for mental health plan in response to COVID-19 crisis

By NewsHound | Sat 25th April 2020 - 8:00 pm

Liberal Democrats are at the forefront of cross party calls for a long-term, cross-departmental mental health plan in response to the COVID-19 crisis.

Citing the “acute” impact of the pandemic on mental health, a cross party group of Parliamentarians warn that over half of adults admit the coronavirus crisis has impacted their wellbeing.

The group, led by Liberal Democrat Health, Wellbeing and Social Care spokesperson Munira Wilson, are calling for the Government to set up:

  • An expert-led mental health taskforce to advise on the best methods to deal with the mental health impact of coronavirus.
  • A cross-departmental mental health plan to find ways to

…

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Tom Badham

We must revive Britain’s history of bold policy

By Tom Badham | Sat 25th April 2020 - 12:46 pm

Coronavirus has blown open many of the issues contemporary society faces as a whole.

The UK Government has acted radically in the last few weeks. The furlough scheme has guaranteed many workers pay, and a huge effort has provided support for charities and businesses. Yet many have been left behind.

Those laid off have joined record applicants for unemployment benefit, as we look on from the precipice of the worst economic crash since the 1930s. Key workers have emerged as national heroes, but their low-pay has highlighted imbalances in our societal values. High earners continue to work from the safety of their homes, and companies are still paying shareholders, whilst relying on government bailouts to pay their staff. It is clear the government has not acted radically enough.

Yet Britain has an established history of putting radical thoughts into practice.

In 1941, the wartime coalition government began to envision how British society should look after the war. The “homes for heroes” scheme had rewarded soldiers’ service in the First World War with proper housing, and it was felt a similar repayment for sacrifices in this conflict was due. By 1942, three long years before the war would end, the report was finished. Inside was the blueprint for the modern welfare state, which aimed to pool the resources of every working citizen to maintain a standard of living “below which no one should be allowed to fall”.

George Orwell commented at the time that “it is something of an achievement even to be debating such a thing in the middle of a desperate war in which we are still fighting for survival”. It would take 6 years until the crowning glory of these reforms was unveiled with the official opening of New Park Hospital in Manchester, the first NHS hospital. Offering free healthcare to all at the point of use, the NHS remains unique around the world.

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Bernard Aris

Parliamentary scrutiny of a Unitary Cabinet government during the coronavirus crisis – Part 2

By Bernard Aris | Sat 25th April 2020 - 11:05 am

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Read Part 1

After Prime Minister Rutte’s March 12 press conference, the Second Chamber ordered (!) all parliamentary parties to make researchers start working from home; only a skeleton staff of co-ordinating people remained and MPs not having meetings retreated. The First Chamber (Senate) only meets on Tuesdays and can only veto or pass laws; their meetings were temporarily suspended (many members are above 60 years old). This was unprecedented.

After Rutte’s 15 March press conference, the Second Chamber Presidium took a double drastic step: only plenary sessions and debates about the progress of the national Corona crisis (one a week) would proceed.  Scrutinizing activities by specialist parliamentary committees were to be conducted online via written contributions and committee debates would be conducted online. The weekly “Question Time” hour was cancelled for the time being. Because Parliament too falls under the maximum 100 persons in a room rule (we have 150 MPs), the 15 parliamentary parties were allowed to have one or two MPs from each participating in plenary debates. To obey the constitutional quorum for plenary sessions, other MPs would sign in but retreat after that.

This sort of thing has never happened since the foundation of the Dutch unitary state and its two-chamber parliament in 1814-15. Right after occupying the Netherlands, the Germans disbanded parliament in May 1940; it reconvened after liberation in summer 1945.

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The Voice

Lib Dem peers highlight problems with social care

By The Voice | Sat 25th April 2020 - 8:55 am

The House of Lords debated how Covid-19 affected social care this week and Lib Dem peers made several contributions on such issues as DNRs being inappropriately proposed to local authority financing and the needs of charities helping seriously ill children and PPE in care homes.

Sal Brinton as Health and Social Care spokesperson summed up the Lib Dem stance on these important issues.

Here is her speech in full:

On behalf of the Liberal Democrat Benches, I also thank all the staff and volunteers working across the wider social care and community sector. Frequently low paid but definitely not low skilled, these amazing people show us their professionalism and big hearts, day after day.

Back in mid-February, we on these Benches asked the Minister repeatedly about care. On 26 February, the noble Lord, Lord Bethell, said in Hansard that

“we are planning … a massive communications campaign on how to protect people, particularly vulnerable people, in our population.”—

The evidence of recent weeks shows that those most vulnerable in our communities and care homes have been seriously and tragically let down.

Others have covered plenty of the detail, which is symptomatic of the centralised way in which Whitehall, the Department of Health and Social Care, and the NHS have treated anything not in hospitals as a second or even third order of priority. My noble friend Lord Shipley explained the problems that have arisen since Whitehall took over the supply chain for the social care sector and then decided to create a separate system, known as Clipper, that we were told was due to come online on 6 April, but yesterday discovered is still three to four weeks away from going operational.

Worse, where providers and local resilience forums have ordered their own PPE, it has been confiscated by government and rerouted centrally for hospitals first, leaving community settings high and dry. This includes lorries being stopped at border ports and drivers being rerouted. Consequently, a lack of PPE and a policy of moving patients from hospital into care homes without any testing has meant that Covid-19 has spread rapidly in the social care sector.

I support my noble friend Lady Jolly’s call for clarity on DNRs and echo her concerns about GPs asking disabled and learning-disabled people completely inappropriate questions. It is very clear from the government advice, NICE advice and all good palliative care advice that the way in which this happened was inappropriate. I hope that this DNR factor will be examined as part of any inevitable public inquiry. It seemed to happen in groups. Were CCGs asking GPs to ring their patients and find out whether they wanted to go to hospital? To do it all in one conversation is completely inappropriate. For many disabled people, it was completely inappropriate to even ask them this, if they do not have the clinical frailty that my noble friend Lady Jolly spoke of.

However, the Government’s lack of understanding of the wide range of other disabled people, and extremely fragile people, living within our community extends ​completely in the opposite direction. As a result, people who have ventilators or tracheostomies, for example, have found that their care support is entitled to only the most simple and flimsy face masks, because they are regarded as exactly the same as the standard care in residential homes. The Government’s PPE for the social care sector is almost always designed for the elderly.

Matt Hancock said last week that health and social care workers should not overuse PPE. The gasp that went through the social care community when he said that could be heard across the country. Most community orders are receiving a tiny fraction of what is ordered and needed. My noble friend Lady Barker summarised well the problem between the department and local government.

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Tom Arms

Observations of an expat: American guinea pigs

By Tom Arms | Fri 24th April 2020 - 7:31 pm

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Thank you America for volunteering your citizens as coronavirus guinea pigs. To be more specific, thank you President Trump and the governors of Florida, Texas, Tennessee, South Carolina, Minnesota, Vermont, Ohio, Idaho, North Dakota, Montana, New York, Connecticut and New Jersey.

They have decided that the first duty of government is the protection of the almighty dollar rather than the protection of human life. Dan Patrick, Lieutenant Governor of Texas, has gone further and proposed that elderly Americans should offer to die to protect the economy.

Because public health and safety is the responsibility of state governments, anti-lockdown measures vary from state to state. New York, New Jersey and Connecticut have been the hardest hit and are trying to ease back towards normality with a suck and see approach.

Georgia is more dramatic. The Governor still advocates social distancing but is reopening restaurants, hair salons, bowling alleys and — my personal favourite — cinemas. Just how hormonal teenagers will manage back row gropes while sitting six feet apart is a mystery waiting to be solved.

South Carolina is reopening its beaches and non-essential retail outlets and Tennessee’s Governor Bill Lee has more or less said to hell with it and opened everything.

Meanwhile the anti-lockdown protests continue, spurred on by commentators such as Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity dubbing coronavirus a “pandumbic.” The first and biggest demonstration was in Wisconsin. An estimated 2,500 people, many of them wielding guns and pro-Trump banners, gathered outside the governor’s mansion in Lansing. The Democratic Governor, Gretchen Whitmer, had angered them by imposing a strict state-wide lockdown.  On Thursday it was announced that seven of the demonstrators had been diagnosed with coronavirus.

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Nick Hopkinson

To help defeat coronavirus, we must campaign for a 2 year extension to the EU Transition

By Nick Hopkinson | Fri 24th April 2020 - 2:13 pm

Wall to wall coverage of Brexit has understandably given way to our urgent need to defeat the coronavirus pandemic. But as the 30 June deadline to extend the negotiations on our future EU relationship rapidly approaches, the fallout from Brexit is again rising up the political agenda.

The UK faces a likely double whammy, one a public health and economic crisis, and the other an entirely unnecessary government-made fiasco. Government machinery is now almost entirely consumed by the urgent effort to defeat COVID-19. We simply cannot afford to crash out of global arrangements, notably trade, without an EU agreement, whilst at the same time as trying to defeat the pandemic. As former Chancellor Alistair Darling stated “It’s madness to contemplate shooting yourself in the foot on an entirely man-made political decision at a time when you don’t need to do that”. Sir Ed Davey and others have accordingly called for an extension to the negotiations.

The COVID-19 crisis though provides excellent cover for the Conservative Government and ideological EUphobes to progress their dream of the hardest of Brexits. The adverse effects of crashing out without a deal could fairly easily be confused with and be blamed on adverse effects of the pandemic, rather than attributed to the Government’s damaging EUphobic policy itself.

Chief UK negotiator, David Frost, tweeted on 16 April:

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Bernard Aris

Parliamentary scrutiny of a Unitary Cabinet government during the coronavirus crisis – Part 1

By Bernard Aris | Fri 24th April 2020 - 11:06 am

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Thankfully dedicated to Captain Tom Moore, the NHS backyard walker, whose generation of Britons, Canadians and Poles restored Dutch democracy exactly 75 years ago. Without them, all this would be impossible.

I’ve been a D66 parliamentary researcher for 30 years, and as a history graduate (Leiden University) I know quite a lot about Dutch constitutional and political history. But the developments in that terrain I’m about to describe are absolutely unprecedented, since the Dutch unitary state, monarchy, and dual chamber parliament were established in 1814-15.

As a party founded in 1966 to update Dutch democracy to the 20th (now 21st) century, we in D66 believe in as much dualistic politics and decision making as possible between the Executive and the Legislature. So we enthusiastically support the informal working arrangement that has now arisen between the Rutte coalition government (of which we are the Progressive, Pro-European wing) and the Second Chamber, the main part of our parliament.

First, a short sketch of the Dutch parliamentary government system, and some notes about what was usual with government communications.

In the Dutch constitution, Parliament is a totally separate branch of government. MP’s who become ministers have to resign and are replaced by the next candidate on the party election list, and we don’t have a “Leader of the House” cabinet member helping to arrange the parliamentary agenda. The Presidium of sitting MPs (the Speaker/President and one MP from every parliamentary party) arrange everything.

The President of the Second Chamber (elected by all other MPs) is politically in charge of the whole parliamentary staff. The  Chamber has its own budget and own plenary budget debate. It’s quite usual in Dutch coalition politics to have a President from the opposition benches; every MP sitting in the President’s chair is obliged to be politically neutral and just apply the Standing Orders and procedures during sessions.

As far as I know a government, let alone the king, cannot prorogue parliament at will; there is no article about that in our (written) Constitution. Parliament is fully in charge of its recesses and working days/weeks.

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Colin Bloodworth

Pensioners and the impact of Covid-19

By Colin Bloodworth | Fri 24th April 2020 - 9:39 am

The global impact of Covid-19 is massive, and even more so for pensioners as the elderly have been singled out as the primary victims of the pandemic, with death rates rising dramatically with age.

There was some bright news for state pension holders in April as the ‘triple lock’ delivered them an increase of 3.9%. But this has been dampened by a ‘think tank’ recommendation for the scrapping of the ‘triple lock’ so that all generations can share in the cost of tackling the pandemic. What it did not acknowledge was that in relation to average wages the British state pension is among the lowest of the 20 developed countries in the OECD.

But there is a sizeable group of over half a million British pensioners living in certain countries abroad whose pensions have been frozen at the level of when they left the UK, whether it was last year, 20 or even 30 years ago. A huge injustice which is now magnified for those living under the threat of Covid-19 and many of whom do not even have access to free medical or care facilities.

I thank Ed Davey for raising this issue with Therese Coffey, Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, and asking for an immediate Covid-19 related intervention regarding the 500,000+ British citizens living overseas with frozen state pensions.

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Rabina Khan

The name COVID-19 was deliberately chosen to avoid stigmatisation

By Rabina Khan | Thu 23rd April 2020 - 7:15 pm

On 11th March 2020, I delivered a speech at Tower Hamlets Council as part of my amendment to an emergency cross-party briefing to ensure that the way in which the council communicates does not marginalise people.

In preparation for this Roderick Lynch – Chair of Liberal Democrat Campaign for Racial Equality – and I had a meeting about how an “infodemic” of misinformation and rumours spreading about the outbreak of (the then new) coronavirus could potentially stoke fear and panic.

Facts, not fear, can stop the spread of COVID-19, so the way in which we talk about the virus and fact-check can shape how we engage and protect all our communities.

There has been a spike in bias and hate towards certain groups including Chinese, Italians, Spanish and the homeless, so it is crucial to challenge xenophobic speech, finger-pointing speech, and bigoted attitudes. The EU’s Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) reported a rise in racist attacks on people judged to be of Chinese or Asian descent and also stated that these demographics in Europe have faced discrimination when trying to access health services.

The reporting forum, Stop AAPI Hate, has been recording instances of anti-Asian harassment since it was set up in late March. These reports include anti-Asian racism on the streets of the UK, Australia and India. An analysis by Al Jazeera found more than 10,000 posts on Twitter that included the term “kung-flu” during March alone, along with offensive terms such as “chop fluey” and “rice rabies”.

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Chris Bowers

We need to be working on our post-virus vision now!

By Chris Bowers | Thu 23rd April 2020 - 3:17 pm

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Seldom has there been such a need for care in the way we do politics. We may be right about certain things, but the current surreal situation means that being right isn’t good enough – we have to judge the mood.

It is, for example, entirely legitimate to say that the entire basis on which the Conservatives won an 80-seat mandate just four months ago has been obliterated, that public spending requirements during the coronavirus outbreak have been so great that, once the crisis is over, there must be a new election. But it wouldn’t go down well if we said that now.

What we can do, however, is start planning for the next election (both general and local), and for that we will need a vision. Regardless of how long the current disruption continues, it has been so disruptive as to make the next election a lot like 1945. On that occasion, there was no lack of appreciation for the way Churchill had run the war effort, but when it came to the Britain people wanted after the war, Labour had a vision – essentially a liberal vision, but we’ll let that go – that caught the imagination of the voters.

We need a similar vision for the first post-virus election, whenever it takes place. In some ways the government has done a good job, in others it’s been dreadful, but neither will really matter come the election. What will matter is the future. There’s already a strong suggestion that people don’t want to go back to what we had pre-virus, that they welcome the cooperation and civility that has (largely) characterised the response to Covid-19. The inward looking petty nationalism of Johnson’s election victory could start to look seriously out of sync with the times.

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Gary Wong

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times

By Gary Wong | Thu 23rd April 2020 - 11:41 am

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‘It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity’ (A tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens)

In the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, we are in an unprecedented time. I continue to work for the NHS but I am also a member of the Sedgemoor district council. I came across doctors and nurses risking it all to deliver the best for their patients. I also see the local communities rally up to support one another. Crises had, indeed, brought out some of the best in us.

The Government would claim that we are well prepared for this pandemic but the reality may tell a different story. We are still falling short in testing for healthcare workers and screening for the general population. The British Medical Association suggested that in some parts of the country Personal Protective Equipment is running dangerously low. Hospital doctors also suggested that we are low in stock for certain medications such as propofol. Some would also argue that we were too late to implement the lockdown and gave up too early on contact tracing.

Professor Gabriel Scally, president of epidemiology and public health at the Royal Society of Medicine would suggest that The UK is an outlier(£) in terms of its ‘open border policy’.

With families and people losing their loved ones, suffering from an uncertain financial future and a unpredictable impact on our physical health and mental wellbeing, this could be one of the worst of times.

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Richard Kemp

Do we really think that a Public Enquiry is the answer?

By Richard Kemp | Thu 23rd April 2020 - 9:30 am

For obvious reasons there are repeated calls for either a Public Enquiry or a Royal Commission to examine what has happened in terms of the Government’s response to Coronavirus, starting from 2016 when they chose to make little of a pandemic planning exercise right up to when we might consider at least the first part of the coronavirus pandemic under control.

I have absolutely no doubt that there needs to be a speedy and effective review of what has happened. Mistakes have been made. Some of them have been political ones and some of them in terms of the advice given by professional staff such as behavioural scientists, public health and health service officials. Beyond that there are questions to be asked about how the Government has responded in terms of transport, business, the voluntary and community sectors as well as others. Those need to be left aside to begin with. Mistakes there will largely have been made because of problems within the health activities which must be the prime focus of enquiry.

I think that a formal enquiry would be a bad idea. Let’s just look at the outputs and outcomes of the relatively recently Levenson enquiry into the press excesses. This was not a great success. The first enquiry took about two years. It cost a fortune. It was adversarial with a range of people and organisations hiring barristers and seeking to defend their actions rather than get at the truth of what happened. There was supposed to be a second enquiry which never happened.

Above all there were little real world outputs from the enquiry that did take place. The only reason that there have been minimal improvements in the honesty of the press, and there were only modest improvements, was the worries that the media had over compensation payments. A toothless industry controlled watch dog was put in place which hasn’t barked but purred when there have been transgression reported.

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Mark Valladares

Daily View 2×2: 23 April 2020

By Mark Valladares | Thu 23rd April 2020 - 7:30 am

On this day in 1516, the Reinheitsgebot was enforced across all of Bavaria, stating that beer must be brewed from three ingredients only – water, malt and hops. And yes, Wilhelm IV, Duke of Bavaria was a bit of a stickler for purity, but that wasn’t a bad hill to die upon, was it?

2 big stories

Whilst the Job Retention Scheme appears to be operating smoothly thus far – noting that payments aren’t due to reach employers until next week – for the self-employed, there’s no news as to when their scheme will start. And the decision to have a ceiling …

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David Warren

Clap For Carers Must Be Followed Up With Action

By David Warren | Tue 21st April 2020 - 8:00 am

We have all witnessed or better still participated in the clap for carers initiative which has grown out of the current crisis. I am sure that the carers themselves are lifted by our support. However what they really need is practical help, something that the government has been slow in coming up with. 

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Mark Valladares

Daily View 2×2: 21 April 2020

By Mark Valladares | Tue 21st April 2020 - 7:30 am

It was a hectic day yesterday, given what I do as a day job, and today probably won’t be any easier. But there are plenty worse off than I am…

2 big stories

The more aging amongst us will remember oil shocks, as OPEC squeezed consumers by controlling the flow of oil, and thus the price. Today, the shock is that the price of US crude oil is negative. Yes, they’ll pay you to take it away because it’s cheaper to do that than to build new storage facilities that probably won’t be needed for long whilst consumption is so much lower …

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Huw James

How liberals can tackle the monsters and revelations of Coronavirus

By Huw James | Mon 20th April 2020 - 3:45 pm

The past two months have been flavoured with fear, insecurity, and a collective sense of grief over the death and suffering of our neighbours and fellow humans. US President, John F Kennedy, inaccurately reflected in 1959, “When written in Chinese, the word ‘crisis’ is composed of two characters — one represents danger and one represents opportunity.” The danger certainly feels apparent today, but the systemic problems that crises like the Coronavirus Pandemic reveal and create are a useful starting point to building a brighter Britain. If we are going to do so, we will need to more than give …

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NewsHound

Dr Phillip Lee slams government for failing to act on pandemic exercise report

By NewsHound | Mon 20th April 2020 - 11:00 am

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The Guardian reports:

The government is under pressure to reveal how it responded to four key recommendations made three years ago after a major simulation exercise found the NHS would not cope in the face of a flu pandemic.

The recommendations are revealed in the June 2017 minutes of the New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group – Nervtag – which advises the government on pandemics.

They were made after Exercise Cygnus, a three-day simulation involving national, regional and local government bodies, conducted in October 2016. Little is known about the exercise – or the confidential recommendations that followed from it – other than it confirmed alarming gaps in the country’s preparedness.

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Mark Valladares

Daily View 2×2: 20 April 2020

By Mark Valladares | Mon 20th April 2020 - 7:30 am

It’s a new week, just like the last one…

2 big stories

Today sees the official launch of what must be one of the biggest spending projects in recent government history, as the Job Retention Scheme goes live. Guaranteeing up to 80% of the salaries of furloughed employees, up to a limit of £2,500 per month for up to four months, I don’t even want to guess how much this will cost. But with possibly as many as nine million employees without work, it’s at least a brave stab as salvaging something from the wreckage. If you’re an employer, the link will take you to the guidance.

Competence appears to be a highly underrated quality sometimes, but without it, a government flounders. As, it seems, the Johnson administration appears to have done, failing to take the pandemic seriously when the opportunity permitted and running to catch up ever since. Whilst the Sunday Times has, somewhat unexpectedly, led the charge, the Guardian has kindly summed up the various failings of a Conservative administration.

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Simon Beard

Solving the locked country mystery

By Simon Beard | Fri 17th April 2020 - 6:59 pm

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Sometimes I find it hard to believe, but one day soon the UK is going to have to figure out how we should leave our current state of lockdown, and with the government reluctant to have a public conversation about how this should be done it’s time put some thought into this ourselves.

The key planks of any strategy to exit lockdown safely are largely technical: we need to be able to implement efficient personal protection, testing, contact tracing and treatment procedures, all points on which this government has, so far, failed to cover itself in glory. However, there will also be important social choices to be made about how we go about extending people’s rights and freedoms once again in a safe and responsible manner.

To kickstart policy discussions on this key issue, a group of us at the University of Cambridge and elsewhere to build up a ‘solution scan’ of all the non-medical interventions that can be put in place to allow people to go about their lives as safely and responsibly as possible, and it turns out to be a remarkably long list – 275 suggestions and growing.

Many of these are common sense ideas to improving personal hygiene and social distancing in ways that interfere less in our day to day lives. However, taken together they suggest that we have some tough choices to make.

For instance, there have been some suggestions that the government’s preferred method for exiting this present lockdown will involve extending freedoms to selected groups (e.g. communities where the virus is less prevalent and age groups that are less vulnerable to it). In theory, this could allow some to regain a large number of freedoms relatively quickly, but at the cost of being highly unequal in how people are treated for a long time to come.

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Posted in Op-eds | 25 Comments
Daniel Duggan

Voluntarism, statism, and coronavius

By Daniel Duggan | Fri 17th April 2020 - 3:03 pm

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What kind of world awaits us after the coronavirus pandemic and how should Liberal Democrats respond to it?

One, not unlikely, scenario is that those on both the right and left may feel that the pandemic justifies a larger, and more intrusive, state. Whereas the former may express such statism in calls for a ‘bio-surveillance’ state, with the inevitable restrictions on civil liberties that this entails, the latter’s statism is more likely to be expressed in terms of a greater role for the state in economic life. Liberals, however, should emphasise the need to develop and expand the third sector – voluntary groups, cooperatives, and mutuals – in the new political world that awaits us.

During the pandemic, a spontaneous spirit of voluntarism, self-help, and mutual aid has emerged in communities throughout Britain. Indeed, although local councils have much to be proud of, it is apparent from my experience as a Councillor that mutual aid groups, established and run by volunteers, have been able to contact and help those who local government, for various reasons, have been unable to reach.

Despite our party’s long commitment to ‘community politics’,  in recent years the emergence of voluntary-run libraries, community centres, bowling clubs, and other services has all too often been justified in terms of financial necessity and, sometimes, with a sense of regret. Such negative arguments overlook the positive arguments in favour of the voluntary principle, within which local communities control and run services, not least the benefits gained by the volunteers themselves. As J.S. Mill wrote,

A people among whom there is no habit of spontaneous action for a collective interest – who look habitually to their government to command or prompt them in all matters of joint concern – who expect everything to be done for them, except what can be made an affair of mere habit and routine – have their facilities only half-developed.

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Posted in Op-eds | 5 Comments
Tom Arms

Observations of an expat: Someone talk to Trump

By Tom Arms | Fri 17th April 2020 - 1:04 pm

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Someone please explain to Donald Trump that we are in the middle of a global pandemic which requires global cooperation and coordination.  In fact, as of this writing approximately 2,100,000 people in 180 countries have come down with coronavirus. The light at the end of the tunnel which Trump talks about is most likely the oncoming train.

So far the the developed world has been hit hardest.. But Italy, Spain, France, Germany, the UK and America started off with a mere handful of cases of this highly contagious disease. And that is the position the developing world – especially Africa and large slices of the Middle East are in at the moment.

One big difference between the developed and developing world is medical infrastructure. Several developed world countries have crashed through the 10,000-plus death barrier and are still going. They all have advanced medical systems. Mali, has three respirators per million people. In the refugee camp at Idlib, water is rationed to two and a half litres per day per family, for washing, cooking and cleaning. The largely Western medical staff working with organisations such as the Red Cross and Medecins San Frontieres have returned to their home countries to deal with the crisis there. Some public health officials are predicting that if coronavirus takes hold in Africa as it has in Europe and America, 40 percent of the population (500 million people) could die.

Faced with an almost one in two chance of death, these people will redouble their efforts to flee the grim reaper by crossing the Mediterranean, Aegean and the Atlantic’ and they will more than likely bring with them a fresh round of Covid-19 cases and infections just as Europe and America are starting to recover from the first.

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Posted in Op-eds | 7 Comments
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