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Tag Archives: sarah teather

LibLink: Sarah Teather – Grubby Osborne’s crude opportunism is capitalising on fear

By The Voice | Sun 7th April 2013 - 12:35 pm

Former Lib Dem children’s minister Sarah Teather unleashes something of a broadside not just against the Coalition, but against all three political parties for their policies on the poorest in society, both benefit claimants and also immigrants and asylum-seekers:

There is nothing like insecurity to bring out the temptation to scapegoat. Instead of offering a bit of statesmanlike leadership, Conservative ministers have engaged repeatedly in crude opportunism, capitalising on fear. And so the battle is drawn: good against evil. Those without benefits against those who claim. Strivers against shirkers. The deserving against

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Posted in LibLink | 11 Comments

Danny Alexander rejects George Osborne’s comments on the Philpott case

By Caron Lindsay | Sat 6th April 2013 - 7:51 am

I told you the other night that Sarah Teather had condemned George Osborne’s comments connecting the Philpott case to the welfare system. Some people made comments along the lines that it was only a backbencher, and no Liberal Democrat minister had said such a thing. Well, yesterday, Danny Alexander did. The BBC has the story. Danny said:

George Osborne is clearly right that there needs to be a full debate about the future of our welfare system but the Philpott case is an individual tragedy. Children have died in

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Posted in News | Also tagged Danny Alexander, Philpott case and welfare reform | 24 Comments

Sarah Teather blasts George Osborne’s “irresponsible” comments on Philpott case

By Caron Lindsay | Thu 4th April 2013 - 9:53 pm

George Osborne has said some crass things in his time, but his comments today, as reported by the BBC, that there should be a debate on whether “the state should subsidise lifestyles like that” were awful, giving a whiff of credibility to the demonising headlines in the Daily Mail that my co-editor Stephen Tall wrote about earlier. Does this make Osborne a “trollemicist?”

Stephen sensibly said:

The welfare state was no more to blame for their deaths than capitalism would be to blame if they’d done it to claim on insurance. The motive was greed; the result a tragedy.

I think, though, …

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Posted in News | Also tagged george osborne and Philpott case | 21 Comments

Sarah Teather on “deeply upsetting” report on pregnant women in asylum system

By Caron Lindsay | Wed 27th February 2013 - 7:00 pm

Sarah Teather has been speaking in Parliament today about a new report by Maternity Action and the Refugee Council which highlights the treatment of pregnant women and their new babies in the asylum system. You can read her whole speech here, and I warn you it will make you upset and angry in equal and consuming measure. The description of a woman who had just given birth being made to carry her newborn baby home by foot in the snow was harrowing. There are many such similar stories in the report.

These vulnerable women suffer both poor physical and …

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Posted in News | Also tagged asylum and immigration | 6 Comments

++ Government wins vote on Benefits Uprating Bill; 6 Lib Dem MPs rebel

By Stephen Tall | Tue 8th January 2013 - 7:45 pm

There were no serious doubts the Coalition Government’s Benefits Uprating Bill — pegging increases in welfare payments at a below-inflation 1%, the same as public sector wage rises, for the next three years — would be approved. The only question was the size of majority and how many Lib Dems would rebel (I’ve been keeping a running tally here this afternoon).

There were two votes tonight. First, a Labour amendment to the Bill, defeated by 321 votes to 262, a government majority of 59. Then a vote on the unamended second reading, which the government won by 324 votes to …

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Posted in News | Also tagged adrian sanders, andrew george, benefits uprating bill, charles kennedy, david ward, john leech, julian huppert and welfare | 104 Comments

That ‘shirkers/scroungers versus strivers’ rhetoric

By Mary Reid | Tue 8th January 2013 - 3:54 pm

There can’t be a Lib Dem who doesn’t wince when the phrase ‘shirkers versus strivers’ is used. I don’t want to perpetuate this poisonous comparison, but hopefully my headline will draw in some of those taken in by the phrase and expose them to a different analysis.

While none of us would want to withhold support for ‘strivers’, aka ‘hard-working families’, we cannot allow the terms ‘shirkers’ or ‘scroungers’ to become the standard descriptions used for people who are unemployed (especially in a period of high unemployment brought about by dire economic circumstances), for people who are full-time carers, for people with mental health problems, or indeed people with other long-term health or disability conditions.

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Posted in News | Also tagged nick clegg | 4 Comments

In other news… Teather’s non-defection, Mulholland on beer price-fixing & MEPs on Irish abortion law

By The Voice | Sun 25th November 2012 - 5:00 pm

Sarah Teather Would Rather ‘Poke Her Eyes Out’ Than Join Labour (Huffington Post)

Lib Dem MP Sarah Teather would rather “poke her eyes out” than defect to the Labour Party despite being sacked from the government, according to the party’s chief enforcer. After the New Statesman noticed Teather had voted against the coalition plans to cap benefits, a policy she decried as “immoral and divisive”, rumours swirled that this meant she was about to defect to Labour. However the speculation was shut down by Lib Dem whip Alastair Carmichael, who tweeted: “I just asked her, says she would rather poke

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Posted in News | Also tagged catherine bearder, greg mulholland, rebecca taylor and sarah ludford | Leave a comment

Teather: “Benefit cap is immoral and divisive”

By Stephen Tall | Sun 18th November 2012 - 11:20 am

Lib Dem MP for Brent Central Sarah Teather makes the front page of The Observer today for a powerful interview slamming the Government’s plans to bring in a benefit cap. I’m quoting extensively from it, below, but it’s well worth reading the whole piece here.

This is clearly an issue that touches Sarah deeply, not least because of the number of her constituents she knows will be deeply affected by the changes. What impresses me most, though, is the way she acknowledges the way the arguments are being …

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Posted in News | Also tagged benefits, featured and nick clegg | 76 Comments

LibLink: Sarah Teather – Asylum through a child’s eyes

By Caron Lindsay | Thu 8th November 2012 - 3:30 pm

Former Children’s Minister Sarah Teather was personally thanked by Citizens UK at Liberal Democrat Conference in September for her role, as Children’s Minister, in ending child detention for immigration purposes. She said then that there was much more to achieve on the way the UK Borders Agency operates.

This week she’s launched an enquiry into the support for families within the asylum system. She wrote about that enquiry and what she wants to achieve for Politics Home:

If you have never had a conversation with a young asylum seeker about their

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Posted in LibLink | Also tagged asylum, home office, immigration and politics home | Leave a comment

Liberal Democrats thanked for ending child detention for immigration purposes

By Caron Lindsay | Mon 24th September 2012 - 1:50 pm

Photo: Helen Duffett on Flickr.

One of the highlights of Conference so far was a warm, emotional and bright interlude yesterday when Citizens UK (@citizensuk on Twitter) took to the stage to thank the Liberal Democrats for ending child detention for immigration purposes.

A line of smiling children and young people,who had got up at 5 am, filled the stage holding gold balloons spelling out a message of thanks.

Nick Clegg & Sarah …

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Posted in Conference and News | Also tagged citizens uk, Liberal democrats for seekers of sanctuary and nick clegg | 17 Comments

Tim Farron MP writes… My thoughts on the Cabinet reshuffle

By Tim Farron MP | Thu 6th September 2012 - 6:38 pm

The first proper reshuffle for our party since the 1920s was always going to be a weird situation. I am extremely sad to see Sarah Teather, Nick Harvey, Paul Burstow and Andrew Stunell leave the government. Sarah’s work on the Pupil Premium will leave an outstanding legacy for the next generation, Andrew’s work on releasing empty homes to meet the needs of those in desperate circumstances will make the difference to thousands of people and Nick Harvey’s tenacity in ensuring that a like for like replacement for Trident is kicked off into the long grass has been a quite immense …

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged andrew stunell, david heath, david laws, nick clegg, nick harvey, paul burstow and trident | 30 Comments

Transfer deadline day: Laws, Brake, Foster & Swinson in, Burstow, Teather, Harvey & Stunell out, Clarke loan finishes

By James Percival | Wed 5th September 2012 - 1:32 pm

I love reshuffle days, they’re just like transfer deadline day. You sit there at your office computer pretending to work while secretly updating the Guardian live blog to see who your side has brought in and let go.

So, have we strengthened the side for the second half of the season or left gaping holes in our defence?

Well, we have managed to hold on to all our big players – Cable, Alexander, Davey and Moore – and, despite losing his place to Alexander after his suspension early in the season, we now have a fighting fit Laws back and ready …

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged andrew stunell, Danny Alexander, david heath, david laws, don foster, ed davey, jeremy browne, Jo Swinson, ken clarke, lynne featherstone, Michael Moore, nick clegg, nick harvey, norman lamb, paul burstow, tom brake and vince cable | 3 Comments

Reshuffle thoughts: how does it score against my four criteria?

By Mark Pack | Tue 4th September 2012 - 9:31 pm

Ahead of the reshuffle, I posted four criteria against which the Liberal Democrat part of the shuffling should be judged. Now nearly all the details are in, how does it look?

Most importantly, have people been put in jobs they’ve got a decent chance of doing well? It’s hard enough being a minister in the smaller party in a coalition government without having lots of people thrown into policy areas they are completely new to.

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged andrew stunell, david heath, david laws, don foster, featured, jeremy browne, Jo Swinson, julian huppert, nick clegg, nick harvey, paul burstow, reshuffle and tom brake | 18 Comments

What the three departing Lib Dem ministers have said as they leave government

By Stephen Tall | Tue 4th September 2012 - 8:05 pm

You can catch up on the rolling LibDemVoice live-blog of today’s reshuffle here and the current list of official Lib Dem appointments here.

Three Lib Dem ministers are at the time of writing departing the Coalition Government for the backbenches. Each of them has issued statements as follows:

Sarah Teather, Liberal Democrat MP for Brent Central:

It has been a huge privilege to serve as an education minister in the coalition government over the last two and a half years. I’m hugely proud of the part I have been able to play in ending child detention, and rolling out the

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Posted in News | Also tagged nick harvey, paul burstow and reshuffle | 5 Comments

In other news… Teather on pupil premium, State of play for Welsh Lib Dems & other stories

By Stephen Tall | Tue 28th August 2012 - 6:15 pm

Here’s a round-up of stories we haven’t had time to cover on the site this past few days…

Teather: Pupil premium ‘changing the way schools think’ (BBC)

The Liberal Democrat MP and minister at the Department of Education Sarah Teather, said the policy is about “changing the whole way schools think”. Speaking to The World At One, she said there is a “scandalous gap” between those from poor backgrounds and those from wealthier backgrounds. ” about focusing money on the individual child regardless of where that child is,” she told Martha Kearney. Under the policy, by this September schools in England

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Posted in News | Also tagged aldc, bob morgan, bristol mayoral election, calderdale council, corby, cycling, janet battye, jeremy hilton, john hemming, jon rogers, kirsty williams, martin sime, nader fekri, pupil premium, stephen williams, steve webb, sunday trading, thatcham, welsh liberal democrats and willie rennie | 2 Comments

No rest for London Liberal Democrats

By Chris Butler | Sun 27th May 2012 - 11:50 am

Here in London, we’ve already started working towards the local and European elections in 2014.

Last weekend it was great to see 52 activists attend a Regional Action Day in Sarah Teather’s constituency in Brent, so soon after a disappointing set of results in the capital in May.

Aside from giving a boost to our fantastic hard-working teams across the capital, Regional Action Days are designed to give activists the chance to exchange ideas and learn new skills.

In Brent last weekend, Sarah Teather MP, Baroness Sue Garden and our newest London Assembly Member, Stephen Knight, were joined by a large range of …

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Posted in London | Also tagged alison hopkins, stephen knight and sue garden | 2 Comments

LibLink: Sarah Teather – Special needs children deserve more

By Mark Pack | Fri 25th May 2012 - 9:55 am

Writing over in The Guardian, Liberal Democrat minister Sarah Teather says:

John Harris writes of the fight he had to simply get the basic support for his autistic child (Special needs kids deserve better than a rush to reform, 21 May). His experience is a story I have heard over and over again. It is precisely this problem that the coalition government is trying to fix…

I also know the system doesn’t work well enough for children with less severe needs either, such as those with unrecognised language difficulties whose frustration in trying to communicate shows up as angry, even criminal, behaviour.

…

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Posted in LibLink | Also tagged special educational needs | 5 Comments

John Leech MP writes… It is not just the Leader’s job to sell the Pupil Premium

By John Leech | Tue 15th May 2012 - 4:21 pm

The Pupil Premium is one of our biggest achievement in government, and helps the poorest children in our country bridge the gap when it comes to the quality of education they receive. Manchester has had an extra £19 million this year, and the overall spend is some £1.25 billion this year, increasing to £2.5 billion by 2014/15.

The Pupil Premium ticks all the boxes for the Party. It is designed to help the most disadvantaged, it allows schools to spend the extra money flexibly, and it is new money on top of the school budget.

So why are we not shouting about …

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged nick clegg, pupil premium and twitter | 22 Comments

Which of the five Lib Dem reshuffle options will Nick Clegg pick?

By Mark Pack | Mon 14th May 2012 - 2:23 pm

Five scenarios for your delectation:

The Lib Dem night of the long beards

The drastic, dramatic and painful option. Clegg says the Liberal Democrats need David Laws’s expertise and media savvy at the heart of economic decision making, restoring him to Chief Secretary to the Treasury and expressing tearful regret that Danny Alexander is off out of the Cabinet, with a resting place as a new Parliamentary Private Secretary in the Cabinet Office where he will not have to handle quite so many tricky TV interviews.

Education, education, education

Too problematic to bring back Laws in a tax and cut role? Bring him …

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Posted in Humour and Op-eds | Also tagged andrew stunell, Danny Alexander, david heath, david laws, Jo Swinson, lembit opik, lorely burt, lynne featherstone, Michael Moore, nick clegg, nick harvey and norman baker | 45 Comments

Labour’s new approach to education: ‘Evidence, evidence, evidence’. What can the Lib Dems learn from this?

By Stephen Tall | Thu 23rd February 2012 - 9:15 am

I’m going to do something now I haven’t had cause to do in a good few months: praise a Labour policy. Here’s why.

On Tuesday night, I went along to listen to Stephen Twigg, Labour’s shadow education secretary, deliver a speech to a ProgressOnline debate on raising standards in education. (The event was in parliament’s Grimond Room, so I felt reasonably at home.) The theme was ‘Evidence, not dogma’, and Mr Twigg stayed true to the spirit of it, announcing a heavily-trailed proposal that Labour will establish an Office for Educational Improvement. You can read his speech here, and …

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged education, featured, labour party, pupil premium, schools and stephen twigg | 20 Comments

Clegg and Teather announce free childcare places set to rise

By The Voice | Sat 12th November 2011 - 7:55 pm

Here’s a party press release worth sharing…

140,000 disadvantaged two-year-olds to benefit from free early education

Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg and Liberal Democrat children’s minister Sarah Teather have published proposals to give 140,000 disadvantaged toddlers 15 hours of free early years education.

This is a key Liberal Democrat policy delivered by the Coalition Government. It builds upon our achievement of extending free childcare to 15 hours a week for all three and four-year-olds.

Liberal Democrat Leader and Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg said:

“Giving children a fair start in life is at the heart of what I and the Liberal Democrats are about. It

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Posted in News | Also tagged nick clegg | Leave a comment

LibLink: David Laws – Could do better: how to stop our schools failing

By Nick T | Fri 21st October 2011 - 9:56 am

Earlier this week, Liberal Democrat MP for Yeovil and former education spokesman, David Laws, had a piece in the London Evening Standard defending the government’s record on education policy to date, but also urging a more ambitious programme over the coming years.

Here’s what David has to say on what Michael Gove and his Lib Dem colleague Sarah Teather have done so far:

Our qualifications system was also undermined by Labour – which was determined to “prove” that standards were rising, even if this just meant making exams easier. Targets distorted teaching: too few pupils took key subjects.

Under

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Posted in LibLink | Also tagged david laws, education and michael gove | 10 Comments

The Independent View: Lib Dems need to champion new ideas for tackling child poverty

By Laura Bradley | Wed 12th October 2011 - 12:25 pm

Figures released this week by the IFS show that the UK will witness a severe and sustained increase in child poverty over the coming decade, with almost a quarter of British children set to be living in relative poverty by 2020, compared to one fifth in 2009/10. This is despite a projected 7 per cent reduction in real terms median income over the next three years, reducing the amount of income it takes to cross the poverty line.

These figures highlight the growing gulf between the targets set out under the Child Poverty Act, which require the government to reduce …

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Posted in Op-eds and The Independent View | Also tagged child poverty, institute for fiscal studies and universal credit | 3 Comments

The significant part of Tim Farron’s speech

By Mark Pack | Tue 20th September 2011 - 12:55 pm

Tim Farron is probably the Parliamentary Party’s best funny speech maker (though I’d pay good money to see him head-to-head in a laugh off with Alistair Carmichael), so it’s not a surprise that Tim’s speech to Liberal Democrat conference caught the headlines mostly for his humour and his stress-testing of political marriage analogies to destruction.

Yet there was a significant section about how Liberal Democrat ministers act and his own role:

There are 18 Liberal Democrats who don’t have the luxuries that I do.

They can’t just sound off if they don’t like government policy or trot through the no lobby on

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Posted in Conference | Also tagged Alistair Carmichael, Danny Alexander, george osborne, michael gove, tim farron and vince cable | 4 Comments

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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Posted in News | Also tagged brent central, lewis baston, malcolm bruce, parliamentary boundaries and parliamentary boundary review | 14 Comments

LibLink | Sarah Teather: Q&A on special needs provision

By Helen Duffett | Tue 24th May 2011 - 4:15 pm

Children’s Minister Sarah Teather recently took part in an interview followed by a readers’ Question and Answer session for the Guardian about special needs provision:

Sarah Teather, the children’s minister, comes across as genuinely passionate about helping children with special needs. So much so that at one point in the interview, she got quite cross. The health service is failing some of our most vulnerable children, she said. The chance of a child receiving speech and language therapy is “between low and nil”, while the wait for a wheelchair can be “really long”, she said.

On free schools and academies helping …

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Posted in LibLink | Also tagged academies and special educational needs | Leave a comment

Internet and politics: how it worked back in 2003

By Mark Pack | Wed 19th January 2011 - 10:25 am

A quick trip down memory lane for some historical perspective on the impact of the internet on political campaigning with this piece that I wrote for an academic email newsletter (the Political Marketing Group Newsletter) after the 2003 Brent East by-election. The lessons still look extremely relevant – making the point that principles of good campaigning and communication last as individual technologies, programs and companies come and go.

Winning Brent East: did the internet matter?

When Sarah Teather won the Brent East Parliamentary seat for the Liberal Democrats in the by-election on September 18th 2003, it was one of the party’s most …

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Posted in Online politics | Also tagged brent east | 5 Comments

Delivering a fair start for every child‏ – Sarah Teather on new Schools White Paper

By Helen Duffett | Wed 24th November 2010 - 3:26 pm

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Posted in News | Also tagged education and pupil premium | 3 Comments

Sarah Teather on the education funding settlement

By Mark Pack | Thu 21st October 2010 - 8:55 am

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

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Posted in News | Also tagged chris huhne, comprehensive spending review 2010 and education | 20 Comments