Tag Archives: politicshome

LibLink: Lindsay Northover: UK aid: High impact, low cost

Former Lib Dem International Development Minister Lindsay Northover has been writing for Politics Home about the benefits for both recipients and us at home in the UK of our international aid budget. This is very important to read when it is clear that this is the next target of the right wing media and political types.

She wrote of the impact on disease prevention:

Since 2000 and the adoption of the Millennium Development Goals, the world achieved its commitment to halve extreme poverty. The Sustainable Development Goals adopted globally in 2015 aim to eradicate extreme poverty by 2030, leaving no one behind. That is a supreme challenge. But it is clearly the right thing to do and in our interest. The instability fostered in the world by poverty, migration, climate change, conflict, must be tackled collectively.

This is why my Lib Dem colleagues Michael Moore and Jeremy Purvis took their private member’s bill through Parliament in the last days of the Coalition to secure that future commitment of 0.7 percent of GNI on aid. Many members across both Houses helped us, together with NGOs, and tributes are paid to the UK internationally for making this commitment.

So let us look at disease control and elimination – which is just one area that the UK is a world leader in, but which is topical as we pass the fifth anniversary of the London Declaration in 2012, when a major increase of funding for neglected tropical diseases was announced.

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LibLink: Jim Wallace: House of Lords must not become an impotent debating society

Following the publication of the Strathclyde Review, the Tories’ revenge attack on the House of Lords, Jim Wallace has written for Politics Home to say that we need a strong second chamber to keep the Government under control.

He looks back at the Tax Credits issue and criticises the Government’s strategy of trying to limit the debate in the Lords:

The Government proposed this change in an SI, for which the scrutiny process is considerably weaker. Each House would only have a single debate on an issue, with the Commons’ time severely limited. It could, of course, have brought the measure forward in primary legislation, where much more detailed scrutiny is possible. And if they had inserted clauses into the Finance Bill, the Lords could not have touched it. But Ministers, fearing perhaps that a number of Tory rebels might join forces with the opposition in the Commons to amend the Bill, chose the route which offered least resistance. Or so they thought.

But, the House of Lords voted to delay implementation of the changes to tax credits until transitional protections were put in place. The Government’s response was to throw its hands up in horror at the temerity of the Lords daring to express a view that was contrary to theirs.

Having lost the argument, says Jim, the Government is now trying to change the rules:

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LibLink: Tim Farron: Only way to make blue go green is to add yellow

Over at PoliticsHome, Tim Farron has been showing up the Tories, who voted in favour of loosening controls on air pollution. Liberal Democrat MEP Catherine Bearder opposed the plans:

Posted in LibLink and News | Also tagged , , and | 5 Comments
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