Category Archives: First appeared on LDV

Is this the first draft of a UK constitution?

The Cabinet Office have published a book they calling the Draft Cabinet Manual.

You can download a PDF of it.

Here’s a bit of churnalism from the press release.

The Cabinet Office has published a draft Cabinet Manual which sets out the main laws, rules and conventions affecting the conduct and operation of Government.

The Manual gives an overview of the UK system of Government, including how the Executive – the Government and the Civil Service – relates to Her Majesty the Queen, devolved administrations and international institutions such as the European Union (EU).

It reflects the importance of Parliament and Cabinet government, and the democratic nature of the UK’s constitutional arrangements.

The manual is primarily intended to provide a guide for members of Cabinet, other Ministers, and Civil Servants in the carrying out of government business, but will also serve to bring greater transparency about the mechanisms of Government, informing the public whom the government serves.

The Cabinet Manual has been published in draft and comments are welcomed by 8 March 2011 and can be sent to: <!–
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Telegraph turns on NUS over fees

Today’s Telegraph reports that the NUS would prefer to remove almost all of the hardship grants than charge higher fees.

The Daily Telegraph has seen emails from Mr Porter and his team in which the NUS leadership urged ministers to cut grants and loans as an alternative to raising tuition fees.

In private talks in October, the NUS tried to persuade ministers at the Department for Business to enact their planned 15 per cent cut in higher education funding without lifting the cap on fees.

I’m not sure this is anything other than an exercise in the dark arts on the day of the tuition fees votes – reading the article, it appears that the NUS responded to a query along the lines of the “here are our unmovable parameters – what would you do?” and given the rock of a rise in a fees and the hard place of removing grants, chose the latter.

But as a number of Lib Dem bloggers have noted, the NUS is more than a little confused on their policy. Millennium Elephant compared the two schemes as follows:

The Coalition proposes that new graduates pay an amount every month proportional to their ability to pay, with additional help for the lowest earners, repayments to be capped at either thirty years or a maximum total payment (“paying off the loan”).

The NUS proposes that graduates pay an amount every month proportional to their ability to pay, with additional help for the lowest earners, repayments to be capped at either twenty-five years or a maximum total payment (“for fairness”).

The five year difference in repayments is because the NUS scheme also means going back to everyone in the UK who has already graduated, regardless of the finance scheme in place at the time, and asking them to pay a graduate contribution also. Is there a register of people with degrees? If not, I’m sure the nation’s graduates are sufficiently masochistic that, on receipt of a letter asking if they had graduated, they’d all reply “Yes! Harder! Tax me harder!”

Caron Lindsay, writing in direct response to today’s Telegraph, points out an additional irony

Look at it this way. We’re being held to account for an NUS pledge which the NUS themselves no longer support. Their scheme, not a million miles from that proposed by the Coalition, was, I’m sure, not drawn up of the back of an envelope overnight. You can tell the close relationship between Labour and the NUS by the sheer number of key NUS figures who’ve made it into Government – like Phil Woolas and Jack Straw. This pledge was never meant to deliver the abolition of fees, it was meant to trap the Liberal Democrats. You can bet your life that if we’d ended up in coalition with Labour, we’d be voting on the NUS scheme tomorrow night. We should never have signed it.

I’m still not sure how those who say we shouldn’t have signed any pledges at the time are quite working their way through the mire. How were our candidates supposed to respond to students? “Yes, our policy is 100% in line with your pledge but GET THAT PEN AWAY FROM ME I’M NOT SIGNING ANYTHING!!” What, really, will our candidates do with pledges next time round?

What frustrates me personally most of all in all the mess surrounding this issue is the sort of internal, party democracy issue that won’t wash with the protesting hordes because it takes more than a minute to explain. But our party policy, voted on at conference by party members still stands. Over several years, many attempts from leaders within the Lib Dems to remove our policy of free tertiary education were defeated by our grass roots. The left within the party, fearing that it would not make it to our most recent manifesto organised themselves to ensure the party committees charged with writing the policy contained enough people of the right left views to maintain our policy into the 2010 manifesto. And yet this organisation within the party was not enough to see our strongly held views implemented by the party in government. And still the grassroots party has options. We could bankrupt our own party by demanding a special conference. I don’t dare think how much blood there will be on the carpet at our next scheduled conference in Nick Clegg’s backyard. And there is still the nuclear option of 75 quorate local parties demanding a new leadership battle.

As I write, John Leech MP has just concluded his intervention in the debate by telling the House of Commons he has no doubts that had the Labour party still been in government, they would have implemented the Browne Review themselves. I share his cynicism. The Labour party care nothing for students beyond embarrassing the government. When I cast my eyes over the short list of Labour candidates who signed the NUS pledge [XLS file], there seems to be a fairly strong correlation between those who signed it and and those who were fighting off a credible challenge from the Liberal Democrats. The Labour party don’t care about student finance, as their history in government shows quite clearly, they are merely able to use it opportunistically to humiliate the Lib Dems. The Conservatives needed their arms twisting to amend the Browne review into something even the IFS can call progressive. Ultimately, William Cullerne Brown has it right:

For students, there is a counter-intuitive conclusion. If you lean to the progressive side (as presumably most of the protesters do) and want to make a difference, which party should you join? Join Labour and you know you will be turning yourself into cannon fodder. Join the Lib Dems and it is now clear that you really can make a difference. Hang the effigies by all means. But Clegg’s despair is in fact a great reason to get one of those yellow membership cards.

In his article on these pages on Sunday, David Allen suggested the tuition fee vote might be sufficient to bring down the government. From May to December, we have had the imponderable question about what difference the Lib Dems are making. Are the concessions we have drawn from the Coalition worth the price we are paying, in our own eyes and in the eyes of the voting public? At least if the government falls, and the Liberal Democrats are annihilated at a subsequent general election, we would find out the answer. The Labour party would have to put away the onions that give them their crocodile tears, write on their blank sheet of paper, and finally get the balls to decide which of their unaffordable schemes they would actually save. Or we would see what untempered Conservatism looks like. Is the pyrrhic victory worth it?

* Alex Foster is a contributing editor at Lib Dem Voice, and received a grant for the first of his degrees. His second degree was a part time MA and as such he financed up front fees from part time work. You can decide for yourself if Film Studies MA was worth the money by reading his academic writing.

LibLink: two pieces in New Statesman

Two pieces in the New Statesman have crossed my desk recently, and I thought I’d pass them on.

First, a quick Q&A with Lib Dem peer Julia Neuberger, including this rather positive outlook:

Are we all doomed?
Absolutely not! Not only are we not doomed, we’ve got a bloody great responsibility to turn things around when we feel as if we are.

Me, I always feel as if the Eco-Apocalypse is just around the corner.

And secondly, David Laws pens a piece in reply to Andrew Adonis’s review of his book.

I am one of those many politicians across all parties who admire Andrew Adonis. If I didn’t, I would not feel the need to respond to his review of my account of the formation of the Lib Dem-Conservative coalition in last week’s New Statesman. Andrew suggested that I have written a “highly informative [but] highly partisan” account, before plunging into a highly partisan review of my book. Indeed, he has produced not so much a review as a conspiracy theory, propped up by a few selective quotes.

Those links in full:

Equal marriage debate features in Pod Delusion

Agressively secularist podcast the Pod Delusion has, since its inception, carried pieces from contributors and former contributors to Lib Dem Voice. Former LDV editor Will Howells has guest-edited the podcast, and appeared in the first three episodes.

Latterly, I’ve started showing up in the occasional episode, holding forth on leaflets, tesco and polling day.

One time friend of t’Voice and party presidential hopeful Jennie Rigg added her distinctive voice with a rant about teenagers (but in a good way) and an interview with Julian Huppert MP.

And on the first birthday of Pod Delusion, both me and Will Howells appeared on a stage together for the first time – both trying to get a serious point across and make people laugh – at Pod Delusion Live. Much fun was had by all. And there was a most entertaining acronym of “atheist”.

So, to this week’s episode, released in the early hours of Friday morning. I took some of our recording of the Equal Marriage debate at Lib Dem conference and chopped it up and made commentary, almost like a real reporter / journalisty thing. Go me. The resultant reportage is cheek by jowl with reports on “Protest the Pope”, phone hacking and a trolling masterclass.

http://www.ipadio.com/embed/v1/embed-352×200.swf?phlogId=9216&phonecastId=40150&channelInView=WEBSITE_USER_3452&callInView=local_40150

Content on Lib Dem Voice is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution, Non-Commercial licence – and this includes our audio content. This means if you would like to take part of one our podcasts and use it to create further content, you are allowed to do so, provided you don’t make any money out of it and you credit us as the source of your material. If, for example, you would like to take the Cabinet Ministers Q&A and fisk Vince Cable’s answer on science funding, and pass it on to the Pod Delusion – that’s fine by us. I’m sure you can come up with more interesting ways of breathing new life into our content, too.

Not too late to volunteer for multilingual blogging

Last week we posted an initial call for contributors to help Lib Dem Voice celebrate Day of Multilingual Blogging this Sunday.

If that sounds like something you might be interested in, do please get in touch with me – <!–
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Full details are in our original post here.

PODCAST: Cabinet Minister Q&A

Our final podcast from the conference floor was the penultimate session, a Q&A with cabinet ministers Danny Alexander, Chris Huhne, Michael Moore and Vince Cable.

The last session at Lib Dem conference is usually reserved for the Leader’s Speech – but that was not possible this time as Nick Clegg had to fly out to the UN.

It’s quite a shock for Liberal Democrats to get to quizz cabinet ministers, but it’s something they took in their stride with relative ease. This was taped from the reserved press section – and it’s interesting that over a dozen journalists had stayed till this last minute to see what might be learned.

The questions take a wide variety of topics, and bring some interesting answers. Danny Alexander confirms that all departments will have to do equality and carbon impact assessments when preparing cuts; Vince reveals a new hobby; and there are some strong answers to strong questions about cuts to science funding.

PODCAST: Equal marriage debate

After a brief hiatus during which our podcast host migrated us to an account we hadn’t asked for during our busiest week, we can now bring you, in full, the debate on LGBT marriage from Tuesday’s conference floor.

This debate may not necessarily be of interest to the wider public, but certainly anyone who loves Lib Dem conference will recognise many of the aspects of the debate.

Highlights for me include Dr Evan Harris’s explanation, in the opening minutes of the debate of his stint as the only openly gay Lib Dem MP despite not actually being gay; the Voice’s own Sara Bedford recounting her experiences of taking young children to Pride marches (as blogged here) (19’38″); and Brian Paddick’s personal experience of his own gay marriage in Norway (40’00). Also of note, after warnings about the “Methodist wing” inhibiting change, was the queue of three speakers from Religious Society of Friends wanting to explain the stance the Quakers had decided on at a recent meeting (25’00), culminating with Lucy Care telling us that the Quakers had even discussed that, if it proved not possible to register gay marriages, they might renounce their right to solemnize heterosexual marriage.

Veterans of conference will also enjoy the unexpected reference back, the point of order raised and the chair’s attempt to cope with it. This is almost certainly inaudible on the recording, as it was barely audible in person.

A brief review of the debate is available on the Voice, and edited highlights of the debate should appear in Friday’s Pod Delusion
.

Contribute to Lib Dem Voice’s coverage of conference

Just a quick reminder that LDV welcomes contributions from all, and none more so than during conference.

Our team is trying to provide a variety of different perspectives of how the conference works, but it is an enormous endeavour, and we welcome pieces from our readers with your experiences of conferences.

Have you been to an interesting fringe you’d like to review? Do you have a different view of what happened in the main hall from how we recorded it here?

You need no experience to submit a piece to the Voice, and neither do you need to have your own blog. Just write 300-500 words in an email and fire it off to <!–
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Liberal Democrats support equal marriage for LGBT community

This morning the Lib Dems voted to extend civil partnerships to heterosexual couples and open the institution of marriage to gay couples.

Conference was addressed by a broad spectrum of those directly affected by the issue and many supporters from the sideline.

Amongst the speakers was former mayoral candidate Brian Paddick who spoke of his own experience of marriage. He was married in the UK to a woman in the early 1980s before his growing realisation of his own sexuality. Since falling in love with a Norwegian man in the 2000s he took advantage of the change of law in Norway in January 2009, and married in front of a Norwegian judge in a courthouse in Oslo.

For several speakers the issue of recognition between nations was an important dimension to the debate. As the world increasingly accepts lasting partnerships between gay men and lesbians, the legal contracts between different countries have got more complicated. A gay American couple I know, one of whom got a job in Scotland, were initially unable to get a spousal visa in the UK because they had chosen to have their union recognised in a state that was not, at the time, included in the UK Civil Partnership Act.

One surprising feature of the debate in the hall was the revelation made by Stonewall at DELGA’s fringe last night. For some months, gay media outlet Pink News has tried to get them to speak on the issue of equal marriage. Stonewall finally nailed their colours to the mast saying that gay marriage was not something they could campaign for, on the grounds that it was too expensive, distracted from campaigns against anti-gay violence around the world and that civil partnerships offered enough parity with heterosexual marriage for us to be getting one with.

A fuller account of last night’s meeting is available on Zoe O’Connell’s blog.

Their world view was strongly rebutted by Stephen Gilbert MP as he summated at the end of the debate:

“This policy underlines, once again, that equality is in the DNA of our party. Today, Liberal Democrat members showed that the Party remains in the vanguard of the progressive movement and won’t settle until everyone enjoys equal status.

“Current legislation degrades same-sex couples to a second-tier partnership and leads to unnecessary pain and trouble for anyone wishing to change their legally recognised gender, forcing them to divorce or dissolve their civil partnership and enter into a different commitment.

“It is time that Britain ends the current unfair legal situation and regains its position as a country leading the fight for full LGBT equality.”

A full recording of the debate will be available on the Voice shortly.