Welcome to the tenth in a series of posts going through the full coalition agreement section by section. You can read the full coalition document here.
If you have been following this series of posts, you’ll be familiar by now with the mix of statements in the families and children section: a strong showing of Liberal Democrat policies, some amenable Conservative policies and then a couple of tricky points.
So we have policies which would happily fit in a Liberal Democrat manifesto such as maintaining “the goal of ending child poverty in the UK by 2020”, supporting “the provision of free nursery care for pre-school children”, a pledge to “encourage shared parenting from the earliest stages of pregnancy – including the promotion of a system of flexible parental leave” and a promise to “review the criminal records and vetting and barring regime and scale it back to common sense levels”.
There are also policies with a more Conservative origin but welcome to Liberal Democrats such as, “we will publish serious case reviews, with identifying materials removed” – something both Lib Dem and Conservative MPs called for in the wake of the Baby P tragedy. Likewise the promise to “reform the administrations of tax credits to reduce fraud and overpayments” reflects the traditional Conservative emphasis on fraud but also reflects the concerns raised across parties of the problems that follow when demands for repayment of overpaid credits unexpectedly hit families.
David Cameron’s attacks on some advertising aimed at children is taken up in this section too, in a way that also reflects the issues raised in the Real Women Liberal Democrat policy paper: “We will crack down on irresponsible advertising and marketing, especially to children. We will alsk take steps to tackle the commercialisation and sexualisation of childhood”.
Similarly, there are several proposed measures to help families, most of which fit happily with Lib Dem policies, including more use of mediation when couples break up, reviewing access rights for non-resident parents and grandparents and providing stable funding for relationship support services.
Sure Start is to continue but taken “back to its original purpose of early intervention” and “we will bring forward plans to reduce the couple penalty in the tax credit system”.
The foreign affairs section is short, has some welcome broad principles and then has a rather curious mix of specifics. The commitment to work as a constructive member of NATO, the UN and other multilateral organisations is now pretty common across most political parties, even if it wasn’t back in the 1980s. The promise that “we will never condone the use of torture” combined with the subsequent decision to launch an inquiry into allegations that the secret services have colluded in torture continues the sprinkling of ethical foreign policy touches through the document. Afghanistan gets a vague mention about “our shared resolve” to support the military there and the importance of close relations with the US is mentioned as is support for a two-state solution in the Middle East. Reform of the UN Security Council is supported, with the idea of giving permanent seats to Japan, India, Germany, Brazil and Africa.
Then we have the slightly random: establishing a new special relationship with India (worthwhile, but why single out India?) and promoting stability in the Western Balkans (what about the rest of the Balkans; would an unstable east be ok? And indeed what about other unstable areas?).
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5 Comments
Would be interested to know what ‘shared parenting from the earliest stages of pregnancy’ means in the context of abortion rights….?
Sounds like a bit of meaningless waffle to me. There is a lot of padding here (if you’ll pardon the pun) – stuff like banning tweenie bras from.Primark does not make up for a complete lack of strategy on childcare!
The only coalitiion policy on families that is worth having is the ringfencing of Sure Start and for that we have David Laws to thank.
Seems okay aside from the marriage tax breaks implied in the text. Everything else is positive or something that I don’t agree with but don’t really care about. I doubt the Conservatives are trying to outlaw abortion by stealth and the part around close ties to the US is fine so long as we don’t end up in the kind of subservient relationship we had in the Blair years. Not bad.
I think you are splitting hairs a tad in that last bit though – I suspect that India is mentioned as an awareness of the fact that the world is becoming a bit more “multipolar”, India is the only real democracy of the countries usually tipped to be potential future superpowers (though obviously Brazil is also a democracy and sometimes is mentioned too) and I’m sure the Commonwealth link appeals to the Conservatives. It’s also a power that the EU as an institution doesn’t have as good a relationship with as it could or should so close relations aren’t going to come without any effort on the part of the UK government, which perhaps merits it special attention.
As for the Western Balkans, I suspect that they are assuming it more likely to be unstable, the statement’s a bit fluffy but the issues facing Bosnia or Kosovo in the western Balkans are more high profile and of immediate concern than, say, the Transnistria situation. I suspect the focus on the Balkans vs other unstable areas is because it is one of the few areas where it could realistically be detrimental to the UK in real terms to have the situation destabilising – it is our backyard and unlike in the 90s the area is starting to be integrated into the European economy – so knock-on effects would be possible. Of the other areas where it could be detrimental to have further instability there’s probably not too much we can do – Somalia’s situation affects us but beyond sending out a few ships with the French ones to protect shipping lanes we can’t really intervene.
Just my thoughts on the matter.
Mark, I wish that you put foreign affairs into an article by itself. I would prefer to comment in these issues separately, although I appreciate that you have a list to go through.
We have just a general election campaign that was almost entirely about domestic issues, and even when during the leader’s debate Afghanistan was alluded to, the reply was mostly pitched in terms of looking after our troops. Very important of course, but there was no sensible debate about how to bring an eight year long war in Afghanistan to a successful, or least worst conclusion.
The only person who speaks any sense on Afghanistan in the House of Commons is Rory Stewart, although why on earth he decided to become a Tory MP is anyone’s guess. Still, that doesn’t diminish his contribution to the debate, but will anyone listen to what he says? To find out more see this video; http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/1240285
Also I would like to know what our relations towards Israel and Palestine is going to be. President Obama has failed to make any progress at all in this conflict, despite the fact that the US arms one of the protagonists in this conflict. Reconciling our position in the world with the Middle East is a big challenge for our foreign policy.
It amazes me that during the campaign I do not recall one politician mentioning China. Yet our relationship with this country is fundamental, and not an easy one for Lib Dems given their human rights record.
I would have preferred to see a commitment to a full police investigation into whether any British or international laws were broken with regard to the detention and questioning of suspects by the security and intelligence services.
I cannot but agree with others who want a better explanation of our positions on the Balkans and Israel/Palestine and hope that they will be based on international law and human rights above expediency and alliances.