Saturday morning in Sheffield this weekend sees the LibDem conference debating two of the areas of coalition which have generated the most controversy: the NHS and the future of the Disability Living Allowance.
The motion on the Disability Living Allowance (F4) has been slightly overtaken by events as the debate within government over the Welfare Reform Bill develops and in fact the plans in this area have in effect been sent back to the drawing board. That makes the motion all the more important, because rather than being simply a chance to cast a verdict on what the government has done, it is a chance to influence what is yet to be decided. The heart of the motion calls for “the Coalition Government to reinstate the Mobility Component or otherwise fund the mobility needs of those who cannot afford to do so themselves”.
Straight after this debate comes one on the NHS (F5). The choice of Andrew Wiseman, Federal Conference Committee’s chair, to chair this debate is a good sign that this is expected to be one of the liveliest of conference as is the news that two Liberal Democrat MPs have signed an EDM expressing concerns over the policy.
Buried in the middle of the motion are lines 16-17 which says that “Conference welcomes the vision for the NHS set out in the Government’s White Paper”. That may be glossed over as a bit of padding between long lists of less controversial points or it may be the trigger for an all-out row, as also may be the amendment likely to be debated that is coming from ex-MP and doctor Evan Harris and Lib Dem peer Shirley Williams (who made her views clear in “I can’t support the coalition plan for the NHS“).
The gap between what the amendment calls for and what Liberal Democrats in government have been pressing for is not that large, however – and some have already expressed the view that the amendment may be a good route to getting more changes made to the health plans. That will provide a pointed choice for those promoting the amendment – whether to try to bring about change through aggressive antagonism or through emollient persuasion? And is modifying the government plans or setting out what a Liberal Democrat majority government would do their top priority?
The full text of both motions are in the Spring Conference Agenda and Directory embedded below.
The Welfare Reform Bill was introduced to Parliament on the 17th February. It involves the biggest changes to the welfare system in at least 20 years, probably a lot longer. It includes the Universal Credit, intended to significantly reduce the poverty trap, by making it clearer to those on benefits that they would be better off in work.
The Government’s Welfare Reform Bill is being published today and its measures are mostly as previously trailed. The big policy in it is the Universal Credit – a major simplification to a horrendously complicated benefits system – and a very Liberal Democrat policy.
Because of the heavy previous trailing of the Welfare Reform Bill’s measures there are no major surprises in what it proposes but there are three respects in which it shows the outcome of the at times very lively debate within government – mostly, though not always, Liberal Democrat versus Conservative – about its contents. In that respect, …
Millions of people who currently claim housing benefit are to be given more time before cuts are introduced.
Ministers had planned to introduce a cap from next April on how much housing benefit could be claimed.
But the BBC understands that existing claimants will now have until January 2012 to adjust their circumstances if needed before the caps are brought in.
The Department for Work and Pensions would not confirm the move, which it said was “speculation”.
Simon Hughes’s response has been:
If the reports about changes to the housing benefit proposals are true, then this will be very welcome. Many of
By Steve Webb MP
| Tue 16th November 2010 - 10:27 am
Many Liberal Democrats may be wondering what to make of last week’s announcement by Iain Duncan Smith to replace a whole raft of working-age welfare benefits with a Universal Credit. As a Lib Dem Minister at the DWP, I thought it would be helpful to offer my perspective.
As a party we have long talked about integrating the tax and benefits system. As a first step, we surely need to integrate the benefits system with itself. The Universal Credit approach sits comfortably with our own policy to introduce a single working-age benefit, and will provide a basic allowance topped up by additional elements …
All governments promise welfare reform. Very few deliver. In 1997 Labour promised to “cut the bills of social failure” and to “make work pay”. But during its 13 years in office the welfare bill rose by 40% to £87bn. People moving into work can still lose more than 90% of every pound they earn: a punitive tax burden on the shoulders of the poor.
The real tragedy, however, is not the cost of the welfare system. It is the price paid by the most disadvantaged, too often condemned to a life on benefits. Nearly 1.9
During the Conservative Party Conference, George Osborne announced a simple change to child benefit. He took a difficult and historic decision to remove payments to households with at least one higher rate taxpayer, saving an estimated £1 billion of public money from going directly to the highest paid 12% in our society.
In what turned out to be my last blog post, I railed – somewhat hysterically – against the reaction to this modest cut. It was clear that the right wing press would oppose such a move. But what was less clear, and more galling, was the way the …
Also crucial, it seems, was Nick Clegg’s role, according to the Wall Street Journal’s Iain Martin:
I revealed in the summer that IDS and George Osborne had a stand-up row over the welfare budget, with a deal eventually being brokered in which IDS delivers cuts but gets to keep several billions for his reforms. The shape of those reforms will be announced at Tory conference next week.
On Friday I mentioned how the old Liberal Democrat policy of integrating and simplifying the tax and benefits systems is getting a revival courtesy of Iain Duncan Smith. The former Conservative leader turned Work and Pensions Secretary has been arguing hard for the funds to introduce a simplified universal benefit that also is more generous than current rules to people in low-paid jobs. This would mean that people who currently find that taking a job makes them worse off, or only marginally better off, than being unemployed thanks to loss of benefits would lose less of their benefits and so …
Unusual political times indeed courtesy of the front page of today’s Times. For a long time a central part of Liberal Democrat welfare policy was to integrate and simplify the tax and benefits system. The policy faded away from the party’s priorities, partly because the details were never that straightforward; for example, how do you integrate a system based on weekly payments and assessments (benefits) with another one based on monthly and annual payments and assessments (tax, particularly income tax and PAYE)?
A large chunk of that policy is now very much back on the political agenda, as ConservativeHome reports:
By Iain Roberts
| Thu 16th September 2010 - 10:57 am
Nick Clegg has written an article on welfare in The Times (£) , which the fine organ is keen to portray as putting him “on a collision course with his party by championing radical benefit cuts and arguing that the state must not compensate the poor for their predicament”.
Having read the article, I don’t believe many Lib Dems will find themselves disagreeing with much of what Nick has to say.
Instead of turning the system from a “safety net” into a “trampoline” as Labour promised, people have been stuck on benefits, year in, year out. One and a half
It is clearly absurd for anyone to be better off on benefits than in work.
The solution most commonly proposed (whether explicitly or not) is to make benefits harder to obtain and/or to reduce their level.
There is no particularly strong evidence to suggest these approaches might work. Even if they did, they would lead to the creation of an even larger and more alienated under-class than we currently have, with all the social dangers the follow.
A better approach would be to try to integrate more of the unwaged and low-paid properly into society.
Currently, a significant proportion of our population feels marginalised …
Iain Duncan Smith is a right-winger. He was one of the first politicians to call for an invasion of Iraq, he is a eurosceptic. So, obviously, anything he’s proposing on welfare reform will be anathema to left-wingers. Right? Well, maybe not.
Under the current welfare system, many claimants aren’t interested in low paid work because they believe they’ll be worse off. This isn’t a guess, I’ve heard it with my own ears. This is outrageous. In the eighties, I was incensed when the Conservatives used to bang on about using …
Some of the most vociferous critics of current welfare policies, in my experience, live in social housing, or have bought their former council house.
They often don’t want more welfare – quite the opposite. They work hard, keep their properties in good order and generally behave as good citizens and they’re fed up with neighbours they see as sponging off the State and causing problems in the area.
The issue of welfare is a genuinely tough one. Clever people from across the political spectrum (and across the world) have wrestled with it for decades.
After adjusting for inflation, welfare spending today is an astonishing ten times higher than in 1948, according to figures published in yesterday’s Guardian.
The graph shows that the sharpest rises in welfare spending were both under Conservative administrations (presumably not unconnected with the recessions at those times – 1981-84 and 1991-94 – though the bill rose in all but three of the 18 years of Conservative government).
Only under Churchill and Eden in the 1950s did the welfare bill fall slightly. Under Macmillan it rose about 50%, and the welfare bill Labour inherited in 1997 was almost double that they’d handed …
Channel 4’s new series Benefit Busters has reopened the debate on how (depending on your point of view) we best support the most vulnerable people find work, or stop wasting billions on a welfare system that has engendered a culture of dependency.
Last week the Telegraph and Express revealed that the UK Exchequer will pay out more in benefits this year than it receives in Income Tax. As the recession continues it is inevitable that this huge area of public spending will come under further scrutiny and is likely to be a major battleground in next year’s General Election.
This is a great opportunity for our party, because we have a package of policies that would make the greatest difference.
By Hywel Morgan
| Tue 23rd December 2008 - 8:50 am
Do James Purnell and Kitty Ussher read consultation documents before they get sent out? I ask because of Labour’s proposals to start charging interest rates of up to 27% on loans from the Social Fund, which currently makes interest-free loans to individuals on benefits who urgently need money to buy large items such as cookers and beds. …
For all its ludicrous ‘New’ prefix, Labour remains a corporatist political Party: a believer in Big and On Message and hubris-fuelled promises that quickly become a hostage to fortune. It likes One Size Fits all and universal largesse – both of which reflect the movement’s fundamental inability since 1997 to recognise the difference between the deserving and the desultory. It is this lack of discernment which lies at the heart of its abject failure to deal with the current fiscal, economic and human crisis.
The Party which belatedly dumped Clause Four clings still to the principle of No Means Testing. In …
Tom Bailey Alex Macfie says:
"He [Farage], has just seized on one case of supposed “anti-white bias” by the police (the only one available)"
So the 3 decades of Brit...
Alex Macfie @Simon Robinson &c: Please stop pretending Nigel Farage is acting in good faith. He has just seized on one case of supposed "anti-white bias" by the police ...
William Wallace Simon:
Please give us your 'What to do' proposals in a future post. Getting to those who have switched off from conventional politics is difficult - even mo...
Alex Macfie @Chloe: Well the time Bijan Ebrahimi was arrested instead of his future murderer was on video. It didn't lead to any rioting or "vitue signaling" from what I re...
Iain Donaldson Thank you to everyone who has engaged with the article. While there are legitimate questions about the details, I remain convinced that a federal structure base...
Straight after this debate comes one on the NHS (F5). The choice of Andrew Wiseman, Federal Conference Committee’s chair, to chair this debate is a good sign that this is expected to be one of the liveliest of conference as is the news that 
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