Tag Archives: malcolm bruce

Caron Lindsay

EDMwatch #1: animals, VAT on tabloids, Diabetes and Sir Alex Ferguson

By Caron Lindsay | Tue 14th May 2013 - 11:53 am

I thought it might be a good idea to introduce a new feature for the start of the shiny new parliamentary session – a regular look at the Early Day Motions tabled by MPs. These are basically House of Commons petition and are used to raise awareness of an issue. One of the biggest elements of an MP’s postbag or inbox is a pile of requests from supporters of a particular organisation or charity to sign a particular EDM. As a rule, ministers don’t sign EDMs.

You would think, wouldn’t you, that MPs could just sign them with a click of …

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Posted in News and Parliament | Also tagged , , , , and | 8 Comments
Caron Lindsay

Congratulations to Sir Malcolm Bruce!

By Caron Lindsay | Wed 25th July 2012 - 2:35 pm

One of the highlights for me of the Queen’s Birthday Honours last month, as I wrote at the time, was the news that Malcolm Bruce, Liberal Democrat MP for Gordon since 1983, had been given a knighthood. This comes in his 30th year in Parliament and the 50th anniversary of him joining the Liberal Party.

Sir Malcolm is a former leader of the Scottish party and in that role made a searingly passionate speech to the 1992 Federal Spring Conference in Glasgow. Remembering it even twenty years on gives me goosebumps. Malcolm spoke for all of Scotland when he described …

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David Hall-Matthews

Opinion: Why the UK should keep its promises on international aid

By David Hall-Matthews | Tue 20th March 2012 - 9:22 am

The best use of aid for International Development has been a controversial topic recently, with rows over the need for aid to India spilling onto the front pages – many of them spectacularly ill-informed on both sides. That issue is complex – but at least you can rely on Liberal Democrats to think about it carefully. In 2010, I chaired a policy working group on international Development, which argued that the UK should focus on supporting good governance, sovereignty and accountability to the poor, so that countries could move away from aid dependency. As India has all of those, we argued that aid to India could stop now. However, with more people living below the poverty line in India than the whole of Africa, the counter-argument is also strong. In the end an amendment from House of Commons International Development Select Committee Chair Malcolm Bruce, calling for aid to continue for now, was supported by conference.

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Caron Lindsay

From Indian Dance, to Speed Mentoring to barnstorming speeches: Caron’s Top Ten Highlights of Scottish Conference

By Caron Lindsay | Wed 7th March 2012 - 3:56 pm

Scottish Liberal Democrats met in Inverness last weekend for a lively 3 day Conference. Here are my top ten highlights.

  1. Leader Willie Rennie’s first ever Spring Conference speech, delivered with sincerity and passion. He implored the First Minister to make as much time for the dispossessed,  as he does for billionaires such as Murdoch and Donald Trump. He spoke of the Liberal Democrats’ long record of fighting for home rule for Scotland which made us the true guarantors of change. He told of his desire to work constructively with others wherever possible, but how we would stand firm on liberal

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Posted in Conference and News | Also tagged , , , , and | 4 Comments
Caron Lindsay

What’s on at Scottish Liberal Democrat conference this weekend?

By Caron Lindsay | Wed 29th February 2012 - 1:55 pm

This weekend, Scottish Liberal Democrats gather in Inverness for their annual conference. This is the second most important event to take place in the city this year, next to  my sister’s wedding in the Highland Capital on 8 April.

Every Council seat in Scotland is up for election in May so the Conference will be a good launch pad for the campaign. It’s also new leader Willie Rennie’s first Spring Conference speech, a chance for him to map out where he wants to take the party over the next year and remind us of how the small but strong Liberal Democrat …

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Posted in Conference and News | Also tagged , , , , , and | 3 Comments
Paul Walter

PMQs: The importance of Doncaster, almost to the exclusion of everything else

By Paul Walter | Thu 26th January 2012 - 12:56 pm

At Prime Minister’s Questions yesterday, David Cameron and Ed Miliband first clashed on the subject of economic growth (or, indeed, contraction). That entanglement was, more or less, a score draw. But Ed Miliband was much stronger during a later exchange on the NHS reform bill, culminating with this belter:

I shall tell the Prime Minister what is happening in the NHS: waiting lists up, morale down. What does the majority-Conservative Select Committee on Health say about his reorganisation? It says that it will be a “disruption and distraction that hinders the ability of organisations to” release savings.

Let us be frank: this

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Posted in PMQs | Also tagged , , , , and | 3 Comments
Paul Walter

PMQs: The nodding donkey and the nasal twang have left the building

By Paul Walter | Thu 15th September 2011 - 11:24 am

It is interesting how voice quality can make all the difference at Prime Minister’s Questions.

Ed Miliband seems to have swallowed several family packs of Tunes lozenges. His voice sounded unusually clear yesterday, without its normal nasal twang. Combined with a disciplined debating approach, this led to a commanding performance (up to a point – of which more later).

David Cameron, in contrast, was sounding slightly hoarse. Perhaps he over-indulged in Russian hospitality in some shape or form. The problem with being hoarse at PMQs is that you end up shouting to compensate. That makes it worse and, red-faced, you give …

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Posted in Parliament and PMQs | Also tagged , , and | 5 Comments
Mark Pack

The perils of projecting the impact of boundary changes from previous election results

By Mark Pack | Mon 6th June 2011 - 10:35 pm

There’s been an understandable flurry of interest in The Guardian’s reported projections of what boundary changes might mean for the parties, but there are two major caveats about the nature of such projections.

From what I’ve seen, Lewis Baston (as I would expect) has done the numbers well, but not only do we not yet have the actual boundaries on which to make projections but also projections based on looking at previous election results have a decidedly ropey record when it comes to Liberal Democrats MPs.

That is because the party’s voting support is far less polarised demographically than that of …

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Caron Lindsay

A whistlestop tour of Scottish Conference

By Caron Lindsay | Fri 11th March 2011 - 10:27 am

Scottish Liberal Democrats gathered in Perth last weekend for their Spring Conference.  I thought that LDV readers might appreciate edited highlights of a lively weekend.

It was a bit strange to turn up to find a huge area around the Perth Concert Hall cordoned off, airport style security and Police everywhere.  We’re not used to this sort of thing.

Leader Tavish Scott’s keynote speech hammered home our USP in the forthcoming Scottish election campaign – only the Scottish Liberal Democrats will speak out against a political power grab. SNP, Tories and Labour advocate merging eight police forces to just one. Tavish also …

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Posted in News and Scotland | Also tagged , , , , and | 2 Comments
Paul Walter

PMQS: Cameron promised faster wheels amidst squeaky bums

By Paul Walter | Wed 17th November 2010 - 4:52 pm

What a relief! For a change, Prime Minister’s Questions gave more cause for Tories to be uneasy than it did for LibDems. Don’t get me wrong, LibDems care passionately about frontline policing. Of course they do. But the Tories tend to see it as more of a cojones (or should I invent the adjective “cojonal” here?) measurement issue – it’s closer to the nerve with them. So I think there must have been a lot of uncomfortable shifting around on the benches behind David Cameron today. “Squeaky bum time”, as Sir Alex might put it.

For once there was a good …

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Posted in PMQs | Also tagged , , , , , , , , , , , and | 18 Comments
Sara Bedford

Beith and Bruce confirmed as Select Committee chairs

By Sara Bedford | Tue 8th June 2010 - 8:05 pm

Liberal Democrat MPs Malcolm Bruce and Sir Alan Beith have been elected unopposed as Chairs of the International Development and Justice Select Committees respectively.  The positions were confirmed after nominations closed earlier tonight for all posts.

For the first time ever, Select Committees Chairs are being elected by a secret ballot of all MPs, after each Chairship was allocated to a political party in proportion to the number of MPs for each party. The committees allocated to each party were agreed by the House shortly before the Whitsun recess.

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Stephen Tall

The ban on MPs employing their relatives: two Lib Dems protest

By Stephen Tall | Fri 30th October 2009 - 1:45 pm

The Telegraph reports today that two Lib Dem MPs – Malcolm Bruce and Matthew Taylor – are among the 17 MPs who have protested to Sir Christopher Kelly at the proposed ban on employing relatives:

Malcolm Bruce
Liberal Democrat MP for Gordon
Employs wife, Rosemary Bruce, as Office Manager and Diary Secretary
“Having my wife as office manager, diary secretary and constituency PA operating from an office in our home is invaluable not only to me but, I strongly believe, to constituents and other organisations I deal with as part of my parliamentary and constituency duties.”

Matthew Taylor
Liberal Democrat MP for Truro

…

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Posted in Parliament | Also tagged , and | 18 Comments
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