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Tag Archives: sarah teather

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

The Independent View:Big Society by any other name would smell as sweet

By Jonathan Lewis | Thu 30th September 2010 - 1:14 pm

I agree with Simon. And Sarah.

At our fringe event at last week’s Lib Dem party conference in Liverpool we were pleased to hear fulsome support for the work of charitable and voluntary organisations, and encouragement for them to get more involved in public life and in public service delivery.

And both Sarah Teather and Simon Hughes emphasised something very important in their remarks – David Cameron may have coined the phrase ‘Big Society’ but it’s a concept that chimes with beliefs about responsibility and community held by all parties.

Simon Hughes reminded us the UK had a long history of charitable organisations …

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Posted in Op-eds and The Independent View | Also tagged ben page, big society and simon hughes | 10 Comments

The Independent View: Please make sure they really do end child detention

By Clare Sambrook | Wed 15th September 2010 - 1:27 pm

Liberal Democrats are understandably confused about whether child detention is ending or not.

Nick Clegg got the commitment to end child detention into the Coalition Agreement. Only last Thursday Sarah Teather promised: ‘Rest assured. It will be done.’ She also said: ‘We have to be careful not to rush into this as we are dealing with the safety and well-being of often vulnerable children and it is essential it is done properly.’

Quite how children’s safety might be served by not rushing to end a practice proven to wreck their lives is a mystery that suggests leading Liberal Democrats have been

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Posted in Op-eds and The Independent View | Also tagged chris huhne, damian green, malcolm stevens and nick clegg | 26 Comments

Rogerson and Teather: pupil premium will help all children

By Helen Duffett | Mon 26th July 2010 - 5:12 pm

Today the coalition Government announced that plans for a Pupil Premium will go ahead, targeting funding at schools that take pupils from deprived backgrounds.

The premium, a key part of the Liberal Democrats’ 2010 election manifesto, will provide additional per pupil funding on top of the existing funding provided to schools, and will be spent as individual schools choose.

Co-Chair of the Liberal Democrat Parliamentary Committee for Education, Dan Rogerson said:

Labour’s unequal education system left too many children falling behind.

The Liberal Democrats made clear during the election campaign that a Pupil Premium targeted at the most disadvantaged pupils was an

…

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

Five MPs face questions over election expenses – how good are their answers?

By Mark Pack | Fri 23rd July 2010 - 8:55 am

Channel 4’s investigation with the Bureau of Investigative Journalism into MPs’ election expenses has raised questions about another five MPs in addition to Zac Goldsmith.

Having already looked at some of the legal questions around Zac Goldsmith, how do the other five stack up? Two raise important points of how the law should be interpreted, one has unclear evidence so far and two appear to involve administrative errors without any actual overspending.

First, the legal issues.

Phil Woolas (Labour), who is already facing a court hearing in the autumn over his election campaign, is accused of not declaring leaflets that …

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Posted in Election law | Also tagged ben gummer, dan byles, featured, gavin barwell, phil woolas and zac goldsmith | Leave a comment

Opinion: Nanny no more – a real test of the Coalition

By Prateek Buch | Tue 13th July 2010 - 1:40 pm

It was inevitable, it had to happen at some point, the honeymoon couldn’t last forever (insert any other clichés you’d like to add); the Coalition government, drenched in soft summery praise in its opening weeks – enough to spark a nauseating case of cognitive dissonance in the case of Martin Kettle’s latest offering – had to face a stern test of its unity sooner or later, and now we have it. But I’m not talking about the referendum on electoral reform, nor about cuts to public services or even the VAT rise. No, I’m talking about Turkey Twizzlers, fizzy …

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged andrew lansley, jamie oliver, martin kettle and school meals | 18 Comments

Sarah Teather announces plans for early years education

By Mark Pack | Wed 7th July 2010 - 9:20 am

Liberal Democrat Children’s Minister Sarah Teather today spoke to Lib Dem Voice about her campaign to put a fair start for children at the heart of the government’s reform agenda. Her first announcement is a review of the Early Years Foundation Stage, which sets out what three and four year olds should do in pre-school and nursery. Sarah said,

“Liberal Democrats have always seen education as the key to social mobility. It isn’t right that differences in social background are evident as early as 22 months and that children from deprived backgrounds are overtaken by lower-achieving children from advantaged backgrounds by …

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Posted in News | Also tagged clare tickell and education | 10 Comments

Daily View 2×2: 8 June 2010

By Sara Bedford | Tue 8th June 2010 - 11:04 am

Good morning and welcome to World Oceans Day. Apologies for having missed last Tuesday’s Daily View – I was over-excited as it was my birthday – and half term!

On this day in 1999, disgraced ex-cabinet minister Jonathan Aitken was given an 18 month jail sentence, after he admitted lying during a failed libel action. The former Conservative MP admitted both charges earlier in the year, following the collapse of his libel case against The Guardian newspaper and Granada TV. Passing sentence at the Old Bailey, Mr Justice Scott Baker told Aitken he had woven a web of deceit and committed an inexcusable breach of trust.

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Posted in Daily View | Also tagged christine keeler, craig murray, john profumo, jonathan aitken, nick clegg, stephen glenn and stephen ward | Leave a comment

The coalition agreement: public health and schools

By Mark Pack | Fri 4th June 2010 - 12:40 pm

Welcome to the seventeenth in a series of posts going through the full coalition agreement section by section. You can read the full coalition document here.

The public health section is very brief and rather anomalous as a section on its own, though given the length of the NHS section splitting this area off makes some sense. There is little of surprise in what there is of this section – public health is important (gosh), it should be improved (shock) and the government will be ambitious (crikey). Innovation is also good (well I never).

The details do however give a flavour of …

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Posted in News | Also tagged coalition agreement, nick clegg, pupil premium and schools | 1 Comment

Dawn Butler apologises for calling Sarah Teather a “hypocrite” over MPs expenses

By Helen Duffett | Tue 20th April 2010 - 11:53 am

Labour Minister Dawn Butler has issued a legal apology to Sarah Teather for calling her a hypocrite over MPs’ expenses. Butler made the accusation while the running of Sarah Teather’s office was under investigation. The Parliamentary Standards Commissioner later dropped the investigation because there were no grounds to suspect any wrongdoing by Ms Teather.

From the letter (signed by Dawn Butler as well as councillors and senior officials from Brent Central Labour Party):

We accept that statements made in those falsely suggested that you are a hypocrite when you speak on the issue of MPs’ expenses because your own expense

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Posted in News | Also tagged brent central and dawn butler | 5 Comments

YouGov puts Lib Dems second, all three parties within margin of error

By Mark Pack | Fri 16th April 2010 - 10:16 pm

Time to say, “Oh sod it” to the usual rule on The Voice of not reporting individual polls on headline voting intentions:

Conservative: 33%
Liberal Democrat: 30%
Labour: 28%
Others: 9%

Fieldwork: 15-16 April.

The last time the party was this high in the polls was after Sarah Teather’s victory in the Brent East by-election, when YouGov made it C32, L31, LD30 and ICM had all three parties tied on 31%.

The next round of phone calls between party press officers and the media could be quite fun. What was that about giving the third-placed party less media coverage?

Of course, in the past poll surges have …

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Posted in General Election and Polls | Also tagged brent east and yougov | 20 Comments

Liberal Democrat manifesto by numbers

By Mark Pack | Wed 14th April 2010 - 9:35 am

The Liberal Democrat manifesto by numbers:

9 different formats for the manifesto (hard copy, video, on screen, iPhone app etc.)
6 photos of Nick Clegg
5 pages of index
4 pages of detailed costsing
4 steps to a fairer Britain
3 photos of Vince Cable
0 mentions of chocolate

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Posted in General Election and Party policy and internal matters | Also tagged Danny Alexander, featured, general election manifesto, nick clegg, patrick wintour and vince cable | 7 Comments

Sour grapes, Guido?

By Mark Pack | Wed 31st March 2010 - 1:25 pm

Alas, poor Guido Fawkes. Blogger Paul Staines has posted so often, and with such utter certainty, claiming that there’s something dodgy about Sarah Teather’s expense claims that he seems just a mite reluctant to admit, “I was wrong”.

Which is why you won’t find him reporting today that Sarah Teather has been cleared by the Electoral Commission, instead insinuating that Sarah got off on a technicality.

For the benefit, therefore, of Paul and his readers, here’s what the Electoral Commission said following their review of the case:

… following the inquiries made during this stage, we have satisfied that

…

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Posted in News | Also tagged guido fawkes, john lyon and paul staines | 16 Comments

Sarah Teather cleared, mystery of forged letters remains

By Mark Pack | Tue 30th March 2010 - 7:40 pm

The Parliamentary Standards Commissioner has cleared Sarah Teather of allegations that she broke Parliamentary expense rules. You may remember those claims being enthusiastically hawked around by Tory Bear and others as if they were copper-bottomed fact; actually their claims were more like a rusty colander.

As the local newspaper reports of the Commissioner:

He discontinued the inquiry because he had no grounds for believing that claims Ms Teather made from parliamentary funds for her office provided support to the cost of the Lib Dem party…

Brent Liberal Democrats said the party contributed over and above its usage of the office, as approved by

…

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Posted in News | Also tagged brent central, dawn butler, featured and tory bear | 19 Comments

Opinion: Today is a good day to be a Lib Dem

By Jack Holroyde | Thu 18th March 2010 - 11:35 am

As dawn broke over Bronte House, South Kilburn, I realised.
I realised that with this beautiful sight (the dawn, not Bronte House!), change was coming.

My local MP will soon cease to be Sarah Teather (Lib Dem, Brent) and soon will be Ed Fordham (Lib Dem PPC, Hampstead & Kilburn). Boundary changes mean that the tiny triangle of estate that I call home is being cut and pasted into the new Hampstead & Kilburn constituency. So, it feels a little like moving home.

But looking at the wider picture – change is coming.
Let …

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged brent central, ed fordham and hampstead and kilburn | 5 Comments

Will £66,000 expenses claim sink Dawn Butler?

By Mark Pack | Tue 16th March 2010 - 8:07 pm

So asks Ross Lydall over in the Evening Standard:

How many voters are ready to turn against their MP over the expenses scandal? A fascinating battle in a hotly-contested north London constituency looks set to provide some answers.

On one side is Labour whip Dawn Butler. On the other is Lib-Dem MP Sarah Teather. They have been thrown together in a new seat as a result of boundary changes, and there is now a fight to the death to see which one returns to Westminster after the election to represent Brent Central…

What Ms Teather, described as a “saint” by one newspaper

…

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Posted in News | Also tagged brent central, dawn butler and mps expenses | 8 Comments

Government U-turn leaves thrifty families better off

By The Voice | Wed 9th December 2009 - 6:23 pm

The Government has today made a U-turn over plans that could have left low-income families £780 a year worse off, after proposed changes to the Local Housing Allowance (LHA) were scrapped in today’s Pre-Budget Report.

Quietly sneaked into the last budget was a proposal to claw back £780 per year from some of the country’s poorest and most vulnerable families. At present, households receiving Local Housing Allowance (LHA) are able to keep up to £15 a week if they choose a home with a rent below the maximum payment for their area. Alistair Darling’s plan to prevent this excess payment being kept by the claimant would have left some of those already struggling to get by on the lowest incomes losing up to 20% of their income. The Government’s own figures calculated that around 300,000 of the poorest households would have been affected.

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Posted in News | Also tagged alistair darling, gordon brown, housing, local housing allowance and PBR | Leave a comment

What does Glenda Jackson do?

By Mark Pack | Sun 6th December 2009 - 4:50 pm

My eye was caught by the figures put together by Ed Fordham, the Liberal Democrat candidate in Hampstead & Kilburn who is up against Glenda Jackson at the next general election. They are for various MPs in and around this new constituency.

Number of appearances in Hansard since 2005 general election, excluding votes
Lynne Featherstone 2,559
Sarah Teather 2,542
Frank Dobson 2,508
Average MP 1,822
Karen Buck 1,814
Mark Field 981
Rudy Vis 219
Glenda Jackson 40

In other words, Glenda Jackson would have to be an MP for 64 years in order to chalk up as many appearance in Hansard as Lynne Featherstone manages in one …

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Posted in News | Also tagged ed fordham, glenda jackson, hampstead and kilburn and lynne featherstone | 2 Comments

Imagine having a well-paid job for life

By Mark Pack | Thu 5th November 2009 - 9:07 pm

So starts Nick Clegg’s comments in the latest Channel 4 Political Slot film from the party, featuring himself and Sarah Teather talking about changing our political system:

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Posted in Lib Dem TV | Also tagged electoral reform and nick clegg | 1 Comment

Labour’s Dawn Butler’s “strange” complaint: BBC should have invited me on before BNP’s Griffin

By The Voice | Sat 24th October 2009 - 1:30 pm

Poor Dawn Butler, the Labour MP for Brent South, whose plight – on expenses, her voting record and media outbursts – Lib Dem Voice has covered before. Now she is making the news for lambasting the BBC for inviting BNP leader Nick Griffin onto Question Time.

What’s wrong with that, you say, no more than Peter Hain did? Ah, but Dawn’s complaint is not so much that Mr Griffin appeared, as that she didn’t. Here’s an excerpt from the rather extraordinary letter, written ~~by Dawn~~, I mean, by Brent’s Labour council group leader Ann John, and 19 of …

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Posted in News | Also tagged ann john, bbc, bbc question time, brent council and dawn butler | 9 Comments

LDV post-conference members’ survey (3): what you thought of the Lib Dem conference

By Stephen Tall | Sun 11th October 2009 - 4:30 pm

Over the last week, Lib Dem Voice has invited the members of our private forum (open to all Lib Dem members) inviting them to take part in a survey, conducted via Liberty Research, asking a number of questions about the party and the current state of British politics. Many thanks to the 200+ of you who completed it; we’ve been publishing the results on LDV over the past few days. You can catch up on the results of all our exclusive LDV members’ surveys by clicking here.

First up, we asked how many of you had actually …

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Posted in LDV Members poll | Also tagged Alistair Carmichael, bournemouth 2009 conference, chris huhne, edward davey, evan harris, tim farron and vince cable | 1 Comment

Teather: “We need a massive increase in the number of social homes”

By The Voice | Wed 29th July 2009 - 9:00 pm

Here are the facts, as reported by The Guardian based on this research by housing charity Shelter:

More than one million children in England now live in overcrowded homes, a rise of 54,000 in the last two years, a charity warned today. New figures released by Shelter highlight the record number of under-15-year-olds living in cramped conditions, with one in 10 children in overcrowded housing.

The figures, calculated from the government’s annual Survey of English Housing, reveal the problem is particularly acute in London and among those living in social housing. One in five (331,000) children in London and one

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Posted in News | Also tagged housing and shelter | 8 Comments

BBC Question Time – LDV open thread, 9 July 2009 #bbcqt

By Alex Foster | Thu 9th July 2009 - 10:22 pm

Question Time this week is the Schools Special – and that brings with it two innovations. Firstly there’s the option to watch it live at 8pm on BBC3 – hence the much earlier appearance of this post than usual; and secondly one of the panellists will be a young person to be announced on the night.

There will also be the following not-quite-so-young people joining in the debate: Andy Burnham MP, Jeremy Hunt MP, Sarah Teather MP, and Shami Chakrabarti.

As last week, we hope to have a magic Facebook window appearing here:

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Posted in Lib Dem TV | Also tagged jeremy hunt and shami chakrabati | 3 Comments

Good news from Brent as Labour agree to stop Sarah Teather smears

By Mark Pack | Fri 29th May 2009 - 7:50 am

Sarah Teather and the Liberal Democrats have been taking legal action against Brent Central Labour Party following the appearance of a leaflet that falsely accused Sarah of receiving funding from questionable sources. When asked about the leaflet by one of the local newspapers, Labour MP Dawn Butler stood by its contents.

But in the face of the legal action, Labour have now admitted their story was false and agreed to pay our legal costs. Result 🙂

Posted in News | Also tagged dawn butler | 2 Comments

Three “saintly” Liberal Democrat MPs #MPexpenses

By Helen Duffett | Mon 18th May 2009 - 6:16 pm

The Telegraph has canonised three Liberal Democrat MPs (for what that’s worth) because they have not made claims for second homes:

Sarah Teather’s balance sheet has a column of zeroes, as does fellow London MP Lynne Featherstone’s, here.

David Howarth, whose Cambridge constituency is a significant commuting distance from London, is also listed.

It’s worth noting that none of the Liberal Democrat MPs from London constituencies claim an allowance for a second home, but it’s still good to see the Telegraph including Lib Dems in their praise.

Posted in News | Also tagged david howarth, lynne featherstone and mps expenses | 8 Comments

Opinion: Ed Fordham’s Career Choice

By Ed Fordham | Wed 13th May 2009 - 4:15 pm

Last night my Dad rang me all concerned about my career choices. I stood in the general election of 2005 and am planning to be the Liberal Democrat candidate for Hampstead and Kilburn at the next election – whenever it comes.

My Dad’s concern was pretty simple: why would I want to join a club of such scoundrels, hasn’t the career of politician been devalued and he was concerned that people get caught up in the maelstrom of the noise and the club-atmosphere and accept as the norm what in fact is wrong.

I believe politics is a calling …

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged ed fordham, expenses, hampstead and kilburn and norman baker | 3 Comments

CommentIsLinked@LDV: Sarah Teather on those flipping MPs

By The Voice | Tue 12th May 2009 - 12:08 pm

Sarah Teather, MP for Brent East, writes passionately in today’s Guardian on the lack of reform in MPs’ expenses:

Every time I hear an MP found out for “flipping”, tax avoidance or profiteering argue they were just following the rules and that the rules now need to change I find myself yelling at the television: “Where were you when we had a chance to change the rules last summer? You were voting in the other lobby!”

The rules were (and still are) so vague that all manner of personal wealth creation on the public purse was perfectly possible. Believe it or

…

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Posted in News | Also tagged mps expenses | 1 Comment

Labour mortgage rescue scheme helps one family

By Stephen Tall | Fri 1st May 2009 - 9:04 pm

Very often when launching worthy initiatives politicans are wont to say something along the lines, “If it helps even one person it will have been worth it.” This is usually a rhetorical device, rather than a statistically exact prediction. But Labour has taken the idea to heart with its mortgage protection scheme – official figures show that to date just one family has benefited since it was launched by the government last autumn. Here’s The Guardian:

The scheme, part of a package of emergency measures rushed in last autumn after months of tumbling house prices, has been “operational across the

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Posted in News | Also tagged housing | 1 Comment

Sarah Teather on sex and politics

By The Voice | Wed 29th April 2009 - 10:20 pm

Today’s Times asked five female MPs for their perspectives – here’s what Sarah Teather had to say about the difference sex makes to how women are treated in politics:

I never would have imagined myself doing this job. I speak to female researchers who are brilliant, confident and articulate and they say that they’ve never thought of being an MP. They see people working in the building and think, ‘That’s not for me – I want a life.’

“The qualities that are prized in the Westminster village are quite male. The “yah, boo” politician, the big hitter; inevitably that means aggressive and

…

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Posted in News | Also tagged equalities | 11 Comments