“Today’s announcement has shown us yet again that for all of Cameron’s posturing, the Tories can’t be trusted to deliver on the environment,” said the Liberal Democrat Shadow Energy and Climate Change Secretary.

Commenting on the Conservative’s Energy Security Green Paper, Simon Hughes said:

“Blindly pledging to build a new nuclear plant every 18 months is a recipe for disaster.

“Nuclear power has always required huge amounts of public money and David Cameron’s signal that the Tories are ready to turn on the taps of taxpayer support risks billions that we simply can’t afford.

“Nuclear energy is not clean energy. A new generation of nuclear power stations would leave us with a legacy of deadly radioactive waste that will take hundreds of years and billions of pounds to clean up.

“As David Cameron himself said only four years ago, not having a plan to deal with this toxic legacy is completely irresponsible.

“Today’s announcement has shown us yet again that for all of Cameron’s posturing, the Tories can’t be trusted to deliver on the environment.”

“Executives, unions and politicians need to start acting like grown ups and get this sorted before the public declares a plague on all their houses,” said the Liberal Democrat Shadow Transport Secretary.

Commenting on railway workers voting in favour of strike action, Norman Baker said:

“In all the political mudslinging over who is to blame for strike action by BA or railway workers, it is the passengers who are suffering the most.
 
“There is no need for any of these strikes to go ahead. Management at British Airways and Network Rail need to get back round the table with the unions to sort this mess out before people’s holiday, business and travel plans are ruined for no good reason.
 
“There is far too much macho posturing and cheap political point scoring going on all sides of these disputes. Enough is enough. Executives, unions and politicians need to start acting like grown ups and get this sorted before the public declares a plague on all their houses.”

Willenhall Regeneration Project Reference Group met with the Friends of Willenhall Leisure Centre last night to discuss ways to stop Walsall’s Tory Cabinet from closing the centre this summer reports Liberal Democrat councillor Ian Shires.

Revised operating time tables, which have already been agreed in order to bring Willenhall’s subsidy in line with other centres across Walsall, were discussed. These will come into force after Easter and will be announced shortly.

Also on the agenda were more medium to long term proposals such as getting the building “Listed” and the formation of a Community Enterprise Company.

A further meeting has been arranged for the 31st March to discuss these issues in detail. The Tory Cabinet Portfolio holder for Leisure, Councillor Harris will also be invited to clarify his thinking on the future of Leisure in Walsall.

Ian Shires’s regular councillor’s surgery is at the Lighthouse Children’s Centre in Davis Road, New Invention this evening (Friday). Ian will be there between 7pm and 8pm.

Got a problem? Need some advice on council related matters? or just got something you want to get of your chest? why not come along. 

A new EU plan to fund business loans for unemployed people and very small firms will need active support from UK government agencies to succeed, says LibDem Euro MP Liz Lynne.

The European Microfinance Facility scheme is due to be launched in June this year and aims to give new entrepreneurs or small firms with less than 10 employees easier access to loans of up to 25,000 Euros (£21,000).

The scheme is part of the European Commission’s Economic Recovery programme and will be linked to the European Social Fund. The facility will be aimed particularly at people who have lost their jobs and want to set up their own business but who often struggle to get credit from banks in the current climate.

An initial 100 million Euro budget will be used to lever in additional funds of up to 500 million Euros more from institutions such as the European Investment bank, giving a total funding of approximately half a billion pounds.

Liz Lynne, MEP for the West Midlands Region, is Vice President of the Economic and Social Affairs Committee of the European Parliament and a strong supporter of this new initiative…….. http://bit.ly/cVlauw

“Prison clearly isn’t working to reduce reoffending and yet all Labour and the Tories offer are threats to lock up more people,” said the Liberal Democrat Shadow Justice Secretary.

Commenting on Ministry of Justice figures showing nearly half all criminals released from prison go on to commit further offences, David Howarth said:

“Prison clearly isn’t working to reduce reoffending and yet all Labour and the Tories offer are threats to lock up more people.

“We’re throwing billions of pounds at something that is creating future crime.

“We can cut crime if we start reducing the prison population by having a presumption against short sentences which don’t work and moving drug addicts and the mentally ill into more appropriate accomodation.”

Labour’s hypocrisy on the environment was today revealed by Liberal Democrat research showing that Jim Murphy has doubled the number of ministerial cars used by the Scotland Office, despite Scottish Labour’s call today for action to reduce the emissions of government cars.

Meanwhile, Scottish Labour’s energy spokesperson Lewis MacDonald is completely at odds with Labour’s Energy Secretary Ed Miliband over coal power:

• On Monday 15 March, Lewis MacDonald said: “If Scotland is going to make a significant contribution to cutting carbon emissions, it makes no sense to start by building a coal-fired power station […] If this goes ahead it will set back Scotland’s prospects of meeting our commitment on climate change”
• This is entirely at odds with Ed Miliband’s claim that “In order to ensure that we maintain a diverse energy mix, we need new coal-fired power stations”

Commenting, Liberal Democrat Shadow Scotland Secretary, Alistair Carmichael said:

“This shows the gulf between what Labour promise and what they actually do.

“It is hard to see how Labour can call for greener ministerial limos while Jim Murphy has doubled the number of cars he uses at the Scotland Office.

“Labour are also hopelessly split on energy, criticising coal power in Scotland while in Westminster they back new, dirty power stations.

“13 years of failure have shown that whatever Labour say during the election, they cannot be trusted to back it up with real action in Government.”

Liberal Democrat Leader Nick Clegg will today say this election is ‘an opportunity for the British people to vote to take their privacy back’.

In his speech to Privacy International to mark their 20th Anniversary, Nick Clegg will say:

“Labour has spent 13 years trampling over people’s privacy. From allowing children’s fingerprints to be taken at school without their parents’ consent; to making us a world leader in CCTV; to wasting vast sums of taxpayers’ money on giant databases that hoard our personal details. And now we hear that ministers want pensioners to swap their bus passes for ID cards.

“The Government’s staggering record on losing private data – leaving it in pub car parks and on commuter trains – just makes matters worse.

“And there’s an even bigger issue at stake: Labour’s flagrant disregard for our privacy flies in the face of hard won British liberty. It betrays a deep distrust of the British people, as well as an obsession with controlling every aspect of everyday life from Whitehall.

“Those same reflexes underpin this Government’s obsession with law-making. Since 1997 they have flooded the statute books with nearly 4,300 new ways of making us criminals. Some of them are completely bizarre, like ‘disturbing a pack of eggs when directed not to by an authorised officer’, and ‘causing a nuclear explosion’, as if we needed a new law for that.

“And where do all these new laws get us? Only one in a hundred crimes ends in a conviction in court.

“The Conservatives talk a good game on privacy, but scratch beneath the surface and it’s clear they can’t be trusted to roll back Labour’s surveillance state. Just look at their plans to make it even easier for the police to watch and record people getting on with their daily lives, all in the name of cutting red tape.

“Only the Liberal Democrats will bring an end to the endless snooping on innocent people.”

“There is a real fear that these cuts are preparing the ground for tuition fees to be raised,” said the Liberal Democrat Shadow Universities Secretary.

Commenting on the Government’s announcements of cuts to university budgets, Stephen Williams said:

“Universities and young people are bearing the brunt of Labour’s economic failure.

“There is a real fear that these cuts are preparing the ground for tuition fees to be raised.  It would be totally unfair for young people, the innocent victims of the financial crisis, to be punished in this way.”

Mr Hague is guilty of a cynical cover-up for a shabby decision which has cost British taxpayers more than £100 million”, says the Liberal Democrat Shadow Home Secretary

Commenting on William Hague’s admission of a “mistake” concerning Lord Ashcroft’s tax status, Chris Huhne said: “William Hague promised the Prime Minister that before Lord Ashcroft received his peerage he would pay “tens of millions” in British tax, but then never even checked whether the promise was kept. He has treated the taxpayer with total contempt.

It is utterly unbelievable to say, as William Hague did this morning, that he was not aware of the tax implications of these negotiations that dragged on for four months when he was kept informed by his closest loyalist, the Chief Whip.

Mr Hague is guilty of a cynical cover-up for a shabby decision which has cost British taxpayers more than £100 million.

William Hague is not fit for any role in Government, let alone that of Foreign Secretary. Lord Ashcroft must now meet his £100 million tax bill.”

Willenhall Project Reference Group meets tonight to discuss possible medium to long term solutions for the future of Willenhall Leisure Centre reports Liberal Democrat councillor Ian Shires.

Councillors representing Willenhall North, Short heath and Willenhall South have already agreed short term plans which will reduce the subsidy required for Willenhall Leisure Centre to the same levels as other leisure centres across the borough.

This should meet the demands laid down by Walsall’s Tory Cabinet. “What is needed now is a medium to long term plan to ensure the future of the Willenhall site” said Liberal Democrat councillor Ian Shires.

One possible way forward would be to create a community enterprise company which by its very nature would mean that the local community would take over the running of the centre.

“This has been done elsewhere in the West Midlands and proved very successful” said Ian. “Tonight’s meeting is about getting more information about what such an enterprise entails. At the same time it is hoped that other options can be identified. Time is running out, we were given just three months to come up with proposal to save the leisure centre, one month has already passed.”

Local Lib Dem Euro MP Liz Lynne has welcomed a pledge from the European Commission that they will seek to close a loophole in cheque-cashing policy that has led to Britons abroad being defrauded by millions of pounds.

In several EU countries it is still possible to cash a cheque into a personal account when it has been made out to a business. People can do this by simply signing the back of the cheque. This was banned in the UK in 2006, but there are no common European rules……. http://bit.ly/aLZBNr

“Dementia has a crippling effect on families across the country and this problem is only going to get bigger as people continue to live longer,” said the Liberal Democrat Shadow Health Secretary.

Commenting on the findings of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Dementia’s inquiry into the funding of the National Dementia Strategy (NDS) released today, Norman Lamb said:
 
“This report makes for depressing reading and reveals that Labour’s dementia strategy is failing.
 
“We urgently need to improve services for people suffering with dementia and make sure that funding is available to provide carers with valuable time off.
 
“Dementia has a crippling effect on families across the country and this problem is only going to get bigger as people continue to live longer.
 
“If we want to ensure this money gets to the people who need it we must give local people the power to hold their local health service to account.”

“It is time for a simpler, more cost-effective system which helps farmers get their payments efficiently, effectively and on time,” said the Liberal Democrat Shadow Rural Affairs Secretary.

Commenting on the UK’s £15.9m fine for failing to comply with Common Agricultural Policy rules, Tim Farron said:

“The British taxpayer is now stumping up for the Government’s incompetence but British farmers have already paid a high price.

“The Government’s failure to issue payments promptly in 2005 pushed many farmers to the brink.

“The chaotic handling of the Rural Payments Agency has now cost the British taxpayer £90m in fines to the EU.
 
“It’s absolutely staggering that Defra is throwing money down the drain at a time when all Government departments are being asked to tighten their belts.
 
“It is time for a simpler, more cost-effective system which helps farmers get their payments efficiently, effectively and on time.”

“He should apologise for the fact that under his watch our troops have not had the equipment they need to do the job,” said the Liberal Democrat Shadow Defence Secretary.

Commenting on Gordon Brown’s announcement that he is writing to the Iraq Inquiry to clarify evidence he gave on defence cuts, Nick Harvey said:

“Gordon Brown should do more than simply clarify the matter with the Iraq Inquiry.
 
“He should apologise for the fact that under his watch our troops have not had the equipment they need to do the job.
 
“They have struggled without sufficient helicopters for too long.
 
“It is a scandal that it has taken so long to get the Snatch Land Rover out of service in Afghanistan.”

“The Liberal Democrats will guarantee that a million unpaid carers who work the longest hours get a week’s break every year – to be taken in whichever way they choose,” said the Liberal Democrat Shadow Health Secretary.

Commenting on today’s Princess Royal Trust for Carers report, which reveals that next year Primary Care Trusts only plan to spend 25% of the £100m they have been allocated to increase services for carers for this purpose, Norman Lamb said:
 
“This report makes clear that Labour has completely let down millions of hardworking unpaid carers across the country.
 
“Yet again we see that ministers have chased headlines with grand spending commitments but completely failed to make sure the money gets through to the people who really need it. This is tantamount to a fraud on vulnerable people.
 
“The Liberal Democrats will guarantee that a million unpaid carers who work the longest hours get a week’s break every year – to be taken in whichever way they choose. Only a guaranteed right will stop vital funds for respite being diverted into other parts of the NHS.”

“A fall in the jobless figures hides the surge of people who have lost hope and resigned themselves to long-term unemployment,” said the Liberal Democrat Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary.

Commenting on today’s unemployment figures, Steve Webb said:

“Today’s figures show that the number of people in work has actually fallen. The sad story is that people are giving up on looking for work instead of finding jobs.
 
“A fall in the jobless figures hides the surge of people who have lost hope and resigned themselves to long-term unemployment.
 
“Ministers cannot afford to gloat. It’s especially important to support those who have been out of work for a long time. They need extra help to get back into work and avoid a life on benefits, the fate which so many faced under the Tories as a result of the last recession.”

“Giving children a greater choice of sports will increase sporting take up and decrease drop outs,” said the Liberal Democrat Shadow Culture, Media and Sport Secretary.

Commenting on today’s Government announcement that 3000 new after school clubs offering Olympic and Paralympics sport will be provided for young people, Don Foster said:

“We have been calling for more after school sport provision for a long time. Giving children a greater choice of sports will increase sporting take up and decrease drop outs.
 
“Currently fewer than a third of children do the five hours of sport each week this Government promised. This one-off sum won’t be enough to produce the huge boost in sports participation needed.
 
“Grassroots sport has lost out because of lottery money being diverted to pay for the Olympics. By changing the way the national lottery is taxed, we could produce long term dividends for all good causes, including grassroots sport.”

“If the Home Secretary hadn’t meddled in the work of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs we would already have had their advice and the Government would be able to act,” said the Liberal Democrat Shadow Home Secretary.

Commenting on the legal drug methedrone following the deaths of two teenagers, Chris Huhne said:

“The failure to classify methedrone is a direct consequence of the Government’s interference in the independent advice of its scientific advisers.

“If the Home Secretary hadn’t meddled in the work of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs we would already have had their advice and the Government would be able to act.”

Ministers have been forced to reopen four JobCentres that cost more than £1million to close, research by the Liberal Democrats has revealed

The Government has been forced to make a U-turn on their JobCentre closure programme after a huge rise in unemployment placed unexpected pressure on the network. As part of its closure programme, over 500 JobCentres were closed, even as the recession took hold last year.

Unemployment skyrocketed by up to a third in the areas affected in just one year while the JobCentres were closed.

The Government spent £336,000 closing the JobCentre in South Northfield, Birmingham and another £758,000 closing one in Broadway, Bexleyheath, answers to Parliamentary Questions show.

Between January 2009 and January 2010, the claimant count shows that:

• Unemployment increased 33% in South Northfield, Birmingham, from 2,472 (7.3% of the working age population) to 3,292 (9.5%)
• Unemployment increased by 25% in Broadway, Bexleyheath, from 1,386 (3.4%) to 1,732 (4.2%)

The Government also closed JobCentres only to re-open them again in Great Moor Street, Bolton and Erdington, Birmingham. While the JobCentres were closed, the number of people out of work rose by 28% and 22% respectively.

Commenting, Liberal Democrat Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary, Steve Webb said:

“It is good to hear that ministers have finally backed down and started reopening Jobcentres in areas where unemployment has wreaked havoc during the recession.

“Jobseekers need all the help they can get and shouldn’t have to travel miles to get it.
 
“The Government was arrogant and short-sighted to close more than 500 jobcentres at a great cost to taxpayers, it is a shame they didn’t realise their mistake sooner.”

As the “For Sale” signs go up on City Link’s Black Country HQ in Midland Road, Darlaston, questions need to be asked as to why the company chose to close this particular hub as opposed to the one in Coventry says Liberal Democrat councillor Ian Shires.

“It’s all well and good Walsall Tories blaming the recession and the Labour Government” said Ian, “My fear is that with the Tories saying nationally that they would cut harder and sooner than both Labour and the Lib Dems the Black Country could be heading for a return to the Thatcher era when vast swathes of employment land were laid to waste.”

“I am surprised at the inertia and the sence of the inevitable being displayed by Walsall’s Tory Regeneration supremo on this issue, or is it because it’s the wrong side of the M6?” continued Ian.

“This is a high profile site which straddles the Black Country Route for this to remain idle once City Link goes would be send out all the wrong messages about this area. We need to know why City Link chose to close this site over the Coventry site, and then set about addressing those issues” concluded Ian.

“Labour promised mothers a choice over where to give birth at the last election but they simply haven’t delivered,” said the Liberal Democrat Shadow Health Secretary.

Commenting on Gordon Brown’s announcement that expectant mothers will be given new rights about where they give birth, Norman Lamb said:
 
“Gordon Brown is living in a fantasy land. Labour promised mothers a choice over where to give birth at the last election but they simply haven’t delivered.
 
“Mothers aren’t being given a choice because there simply aren’t enough midwives to handle the growing birth rate. Nothing that Labour is proposing will address that problem.
 
“Rather than reeling off even more undeliverable pledges, Labour should concentrate on delivering on the promises they’ve already made. Recruiting extra midwives so that everyone can have a safe birth should clearly be the number one priority.”

Jim Murphy and Alex Salmond have today welcomed the leasing of sites for marine renewable energy generation off Scotland, despite the fact that their respective governments’ flagship schemes have paid out nothing to fund marine energy technologies.

Liberal Democrat research has found that:

• Not one project has yet received funding from the UK Government’s £42m Marine Renewables Deployment Fund
• Not one project has yet received funding from the Scottish Government’s Saltire Prize, although over £77,000 has been spent on advertising it 

Commenting, Liberal Democrat Shadow Scotland Secretary, Alistair Carmichael said:

“Governments in London and Edinburgh have delivered little more than rhetoric on renewables so far.

“Today’s announcements are welcome, but this is the start of a process rather than the end.

“Both Labour and the SNP’s flagship marine energy funds have paid out nothing to technologies crying out for support.

“The politicians falling over themselves to welcome these announcements must now make sure they deliver on their earlier commitments to ensure we see real progress.”

“Both parties need to agree to a cross-party Commission designed to reach agreement within a year,” said the Liberal Democrat Shadow Health Secretary.

Commenting on today’s King’s Fund report on social care, Norman Lamb said:

“Today’s report supports the Liberal Democrat view that the fairest way to fund social care in the future is through a partnership between individuals and the state.

“While everyone agrees that the social care system is in urgent need of reform we have to be realistic about the state of the public finances. That’s why it’s so important that all the major parties sit down together and work this out.

“Older voters won’t be fooled by Labour and Tory attempts to win their votes with piecemeal policies. Both parties need to agree to a cross-party Commission designed to reach agreement within a year.”

Liberal Democrat Leader Nick Clegg today gave a speech to the IPPR on deficit reduction.

 Something big is missing from the public debate about the deficit.
The public.
Politicians, economists and business leaders have been firing pot-shots at one another for well over 18 months on this issue.
But so far it has been a process largely confined to a political and economic bubble in Westminster, Whitehall and the City of London.
The debate has been cut off from the realities of people’s everyday lives.

We have had groups of economists trading letters in the newspapers about the best time to begin fiscal contraction.
We have had Alistair Darling and George Osborne, Gordon Brown and David Cameron using these disparate economic analyses to score points off one another in TV studios and the House of Commons.
We have had lists of demands from the CBI and the Institute of Directors.
We have had commentary from the Institute for Fiscal Studies.
Half of the debate has been political posturing, and the other half elevated economic theorising.

There is an enormous risk ahead.
In a democracy, dramatic change cannot be imposed from above or it will fail.
It has to be led by a process of political engagement.
You only have to look at the scale of industrial unrest in Greece to see that it is impossible to reduce a public deficit quickly if you do not find a way to persuade people to go along with the process.
And you only have to look at the success of the fiscal contraction in Canada, where a purposeful attempt was made to engage the public, to see that it is possible to rally support for deficit reduction, and it makes it easier to achieve the necessary cuts.

My point is simple:
If we do not find a way to take the people of Britain with us on this difficult journey of deficit reduction…
We will not be able to make the journey.
We will instead follow Greece down the road to economic, political and social disruption.

In my view, regardless of the outcome of the next election…
It is unrealistic to presume that this level of change can be driven through by the standard procedures of Westminster politics.
Our current government was elected with the support of just 22% of eligible voters.
How can a government elected without majority support ever command majority support for something as painful as deficit reduction on the scale required?

If a government tries to ram through major change to public spending solely through the usual Westminster combination of machismo and threats from the Whips, it will not only fail…
It could find itself torn to pieces.

The debate on public spending has been too narrowly focused on timing.
It has forgotten the biggest and most essential ingredient of all: how to win public support.

Economists and politicians alike need to remember what public spending is.
Yes: your approach to public spending says a lot about your political identity.
But no: that doesn’t mean the sole purpose of public spending is for ideological positioning.
Yes: the big numbers and the economic trends are important.
But no: that doesn’t mean public spending is just numbers on a balance sheet that can be increased or decreased at will to fit with an economic theory.

Public spending is not just numbers.
Public spending is nurses’ and doctors’ salaries.
It is text books and computers in the classroom.
It is police on the streets and judges in the court room.
It is the difference between decent tanks and soldiers dying from roadside bombs.
Public spending is the difference for millions of families between making ends meet and having to go without.
Reducing it is going to be extremely difficult.
And it will be painful.

The scale of the deficit we are dealing with at the moment is enormous.
£175bn this year.
12 and a half percent of GDP.
A deficit of which the Government thinks up to £80bn is structural, meaning it will not be eliminated by anticipated economic growth.
One of the worst myths being peddled by some within both Labour and Conservative parties at the moment is that the deficit can be eliminated simply through better management, efficiency drives and waste reduction.
As if we can reduce public spending by as £80bn or more a year without anyone noticing.
That is not true, and it is wrong to pretend otherwise.
Even efficiencies usually mean redundancies, and that means more people out of work.
The truth is that to eliminate the deficit, we are going to have to look in detail at everything the government does…
And some of them will simply have to stop.

This is an unprecedented challenge in the modern era.
We need to bring about the biggest fiscal contraction in post-war political history.
This will mean enormously tight spending rounds for many years to come.
Liberal Democrats will be setting out in advance of the election a full plan for £15bn a year of savings that can be delivered by 2012…
Assuming the economy is in a strong enough position by then to bear this level of fiscal restraint.
But we are the first to admit that our plan does not yet go far enough.
Even by end of the next Parliament, there will be another £10-15bn of savings to find over what we have announced and the Government has already found.
With another £40bn of savings in today’s prices that need to be identified by 2018.
And those figures, enormous though they are, are all built on the presumption of decent growth and that the government’s proposed 8-year timetable for deficit reduction remains appropriate.
Liberal Democrats believe we may need to revisit both the timetable and the level of savings required…
If borrowing conditions worsen dramatically, if growth does not match up to Treasury expectations or if the structural element of the deficit turns out to be larger than estimated.

Let’s be absolutely straightforward about this.
There is no serious doubt that at some point in the next eight years…
The government is going to have to stop spending as much as 10% of what it spends today.
This is not just a huge challenge for the mandarins and the politicians who will have to pore over the books of every department in search of cuts to make…
It is a huge challenge for every citizen of the United Kingdom…
All the millions of people who have to adjust to a new kind of environment for public spending.

We have to ease the pain.
We have to make sure people are bought into, not alienated by, the process of deficit reduction.
And ensure that cuts do not undermine fairness, but strengthen it.
I have identified three principles on which the process of deficit reduction should be based.
They are timing, consultation and fairness.
By sticking to these three principles, I believe we can buy people into the process of governmental change ahead.

First: timing.
This has, at least, been the subject of extensive debate, but good economics has been crowded out by political dogma.
My approach is simple:
We must get the timing right because if we cut public spending too quickly, we risk undermining a nascent recovery…
And undermining the growth in tax receipts that is so desperately needed.
It’s like cutting back a tree – do it at the wrong time of year, and you will kill the tree.
Do it at the right time, and you help it to grow strong.

That is why Vince Cable and I have set out five objective economic conditions that we will assess when judging when public spending should begin to be cut.
These are: the rate of growth; the level of unemployment; credit conditions; the extent of spare capacity in the economy and the cost of Government borrowing.
Our working assumption is that the conditions will be right for cuts from 2011-12, but not before.
So in our first year of office, we will recycle the money from any cuts we can identify…
Like taking the top 20% of claimants out of the tax credit system…
Into an economic stimulus and job creation package…
To help kick-start the economy on a greener footing.

This jobs plan will be fiscally neutral…
But it will get up to 100,000 people back into work.
Demonstrating a clear commitment from government to put jobs and growth first.
Ensuring there is a clear benefit to individuals from the initial cuts we make…
And helping win public support for change.

The second principle on which deficit reduction plans should be based is consultation.
It would be completely wrong for officials and ministers of whatever government is elected on May 6 to lock themselves in a room for a few months and announce a plan.
The outcome would be instant anger and alienation.
Imagine it:
Knowing nothing for week after week about whether your job was secure…
Your benefits were protected…
Or your school was safe…
Waiting for the announcements, unclear about the future and unable to influence the outcome.
And when the announcements came…
It would be like twenty Budget days come all at once.
Everyone desperately trying to work out from the small print how they will be affected.

You simply cannot cancel one in ten pounds of government spending without asking people – the people who run public services and the people who use them – how best to do it.
I believe Britain must learn from the approach taken by the Liberal government in Canada in the 1990s.
At that time, Canada had an annual budget deficit a tenth the size of its economy…
Almost as large as the UK’s is today.
Rather than making cuts behind closed doors, the Liberal Government realised that if people were to understand what needed to be done they had to talk to them.
They held a massive consultation.
About every last line of public spending.
Asking the people who really knew: what to cut and what to protect.
And they managed to eliminate that vast deficit in four years…
Taking the people with them.

Liberal Democrats will follow Canada’s lead.
After the election, we will hold an emergency budget and interim spending review which will put in place cuts which could be realised within the financial year, such as scrapping the Child Trust Fund or restricting tax credits, to release money for our job and infrastructure package.
Subject to our five economic tests being met, that interim spending review will also put into place the cuts for 2011-12 identified in our manifesto.
Then, throughout the summer and early autumn…
We will hold a comprehensive spending review of all departments…
Consulting for three or four months with people in every part of Britain…
In every industry…
Of every age.
Not just to win support…
But to seek ideas.

The people who use public services and the people who run them know far better than ministers and mandarins what is needed and what is not.
Last autumn I set up a website called Ask the People in the Know, where I sought ideas from public servants about how and where to cut.
We were flooded with hundreds of suggestions.
From wasteful procurement practices to unnecessary projects.
People out there in the country are full of ideas.
We just need to harness those ideas, using the innovative capacity of everyone in Britain to tackle this unprecedented national challenge.

The third essential principle is fairness.
It’s a fundamental British value.
It’s something everyone instinctively understands.
It must be right at the centre of our minds when we look for savings that can be made.
Not just because it is right in principle…
But also because it is the only way to maintain solidarity…
And ensure continued public support for deficit reduction.
No-one will support cuts to public spending that seem to have an unfair impact on the people most in need of help.

So we need to choose cuts that have a fair impact.
We need to keep the door open to limited new spending, where it is essential for fairness.
And we need to put fairness into our tax system, too.
So people do not feel they are being forced to pay through the nose for disappearing services.

Identifying cuts that have a fair impact is challenging.
But possible.
Our proposal for restraint in public sector pay, for example.
Instead of proposing a blanket freeze, like the Conservatives, or a 1% pay rise like Labour…
We propose a cash limit on pay rises of £400.
That will ensure the lower your salary, the higher percentage pay rise you are eligible for.
For an NHS manager on £90,000, £400 is a tiny increase.
But for a janitor on £12,000, it would be a substantial 3% pay rise.
This proposal is not only right in principle, because it means those with the broadest shoulders take the greatest strain…
It is also right for practical purposes because it is fair, and will therefore secure broader support for pay restraint that may have to last for several years.

In other areas, it is only possible to make cuts fair if you redirect some of the money into alternate spending.
Liberal Democrats will not, for these reasons, put every penny we can save into deficit reduction…
We will use one third of that money for alternate spending…
To really enshrine fairness in our society.
We propose a pupil premium, worth £2.5bn a year for our schools, targeted at helping children from the most deprived backgrounds, but making it possible for schools to cut class sizes and increase one-to-one tuition to the benefit of everyone.
We propose 3,000 more police on the beat
We propose a pay rise for our troops, especially those at the more junior ranks.

If all people hear is austerity and cuts…
They will lose hope.
If people see that there are choices being made…
That some cuts are being used to improve their lives or the lives of those in tremendous need…
They will be readier to support the process.
And rightly so.

Fairness must not just be constrained to what government spends money on, however.
We need to put fairness into our tax system, too, to win support.
That is where our fair tax package comes in.
Liberal Democrats propose the most radical reform of our tax system in a generation.
We will ensure no-one pays tax on the first £10,000 they earn, paid for by closing loopholes that unfairly benefit those at the top and increasing taxes on polluting aircraft.
That means complete freedom from income tax for 3.6m low earners and pensioners.
And £700 in the pockets of tens of millions more.

This is the right thing to do for the sake of fairness, correcting the imbalance that has long meant the poorest pay a higher proportion of their income in tax than the richest.
It is the right thing to do for economic recovery, too, as it will put money back in the pockets of millions of people who are currently struggling…
And the evidence suggests a high proportion of that money will be spent, circulating in the economy and driving consumer demand.
But our tax changes are also part of a grand bargain between a future government of whatever composition…
And the British people who want to see they are being looked after and supported even as the deficit is reduced and public spending falls.

Most people recognise that paying taxes is a social obligation, by which we contribute to shared services that we depend on as a community.
But how can anyone feel positive about paying taxes when they see the wealthiest people getting out of paying their dues?
And how much anger will it create if people feel they are paying too much tax at the same time as losing public services on which they depend?

Our tax package offers a way forward: the means by which public support for his long and difficult process can be won and maintained.
Tax cuts for millions will sweeten the very bitter pill of the largest fiscal contraction in modern history.
If we do not implement these changes…
It will be impossible to rally people behind public sector spending cuts…
And any serious attempt to cut the deficit will fail.

By making the tax system fair…
We can ensure people see the benefit of change…
We can ensure that cuts to public spending do not hurt individual families who cannot take the strain.
And we can ensure that the process of reducing the deficit carries public opinion instead of alienating already disenfranchised voters from the political process.

Reducing the deficit will be one of the biggest challenges for the next government, whatever its complexion.
With several public sector unions already campaigning against government proposals for spending restraint…
While business organisations campaign for tax cuts…
It is clear that the political challenge will be as large, if not larger, than the practical challenge.

Deficit reduction will take the best part of a decade.
It will take great courage and effort to maintain public support for restraint and austerity for such a long period of time.
One-off bribes such as those Labour is predicted to include in the budget will not sustain support over the long term.
But I believe if fairness is put first in identifying cuts…
If tax reform is brought forward to put money back the pockets of the millions of people who depend on public services…
If government makes the effort to ask the people who run public services and the people who use them for their ideas on how and what to cut…
And if growth is nurtured by maintaining public spending for one more year, while recovery is still fragile…
It will be possible.
We will be able to reduce the deficit…
Protect the nation’s financial position…
And build a stronger, fairer and more united Britain.

“We must not cut Government spending too soon and risk plunging a fragile recovery back into recession,” said the Liberal Democrat Shadow Chancellor.

Commenting on the EU Commission report that recommends that more should be done to cut Britain’s fiscal deficit, Vince Cable said:

“The Government’s position on the size of the structural deficit and the speed at which it must be cut is the minimum.

“We must not cut Government spending too soon and risk plunging a fragile recovery back into recession.

“Cuts without economic growth will not deal with the deficit.

“To be credible all parties must not only show when they will tackle the deficit, but also what they will cut.”

The Electoral Commission consulted four lawyers – two Queen’s Counsel and two junior counsel – at a total cost of £81,000 before it cleared Lord Ashcroft’s donations to the Conservative Party through Bearwood Corporate Services, according to a Parliamentary answer to the Liberal Democrats.

Commenting, Liberal Democrat Shadow Home Secretary, Chris Huhne said:

“It is appalling that the Electoral Commission has had to go to four different lawyers, on top of its own legal team, at a total cost of £81,000 before they got the answer that they wanted, which was to give the all clear to Lord Ashcroft’s dodgy donations.
 
“The Electoral Commission should now publish all the legal advice so that others can make a judgement about whether to challenge this decision in the courts.
 
“This smacks of the sort of legal tourism we saw in the Government over the illegal war in Iraq and at Lehman’s before it collapsed, where some lawyers wouldn’t give the opinion they wanted so they moved on until they found one who would.”

“On average, a £10,000 debt repaid at the minimum rate will still take more than 35 years to pay off,” said the Liberal Democrat Shadow Business Secretary.

Commenting on new rules on the cost of credit card borrowing announced by the Government today, John Thurso said:

“Credit card interest rates have been hiked to their highest levels since June 2006 despite the fact that interest rates have bottomed out at 0.5%. We need a maximum interest rate put in place to end this profiteering.

“It’s right that the most expensive debt should be paid off first but the Government’s lack of action on minimum repayments means that credit card debt will still take decades to repay.

“On average, a £10,000 debt repaid at the minimum rate will still take more than 35 years to pay off.

“Credit cards will remain a very expensive way to borrow. The Government must do more to provide financial advice to all consumers to allow them to make informed lending decisions.”

“Labour has failed when it comes to our children’s health,” said the Liberal Democrat Shadow Health Secretary.

Commenting on the Chief Medical Officer’s report released today which calls for fitness tests for children in secondary schools, Norman Lamb said:
 
“Sir Liam Donaldson is right to raise concerns about the state of our children’s health but routine ‘bleep tests’ won’t by themselves solve the obesity crisis facing the country.
 
“Labour has failed when it comes to our children’s health. Gordon Brown claimed three years ago that every child would get the chance to do five hours of sport each week but less than a third are doing it.
 
“It’s hardly surprising that physical activity has declined and obesity soared when ministers spend all their time obsessing about targets, process and surveys.

“Physical activity should be a central part of our children’s lives, not an optional extra. This means protecting playing fields, ensuring lottery money is spent on facilities and improving links between schools and community clubs so kids have somewhere to keep playing sport once they leave school.”

“This is a pretty desperate attempt from Ed Balls to re-package existing deprivation funding for schools,” said the Liberal Democrat Shadow Schools Secretary.

Commenting on the Government’s launch of a consultation on the future of schools funding, David Laws said:
 
“This is a pretty desperate attempt from Ed Balls to re-package existing deprivation funding for schools.
 
“What is missing is any suggestion of additional money.

“Since it would be politically impossible to cut the budgets of some schools to shift money to others, what Ed Balls is talking about is political posturing not serious policy.”

“If any Government tries to cut back too soon, it will aggravate unemployment, making the deficit worse and compounding the country’s problems,” said the Liberal Democrat Shadow Chancellor.

Responding to the Bank of England’s latest quarterly bulletin and its warnings of job market uncertainty, Vince Cable said:

“This is strong confirmation from the Bank of England that the British economy is still weak.

“Although unemployment is not as bad as it could have been given the extent of the economic collapse, there is still worrying uncertainty.

“The clear implication of the Bank’s analysis is that if any Government tries to cut back too soon, it will aggravate unemployment, making the deficit worse and compounding the country’s problems.

“Each party must set out a clear process of what and how it will cut to tackle the deficit, but when this starts must be guided by economics, not political dogma.”

  Shortly after Nick Clegg’s Conference Speech to the Liberal Democrat Spring Confernce, I received the following email from the Liberal Democrat Leader.    In his email, Nick Clegg outlines how the Liberal Democrats would make Britain a fairer by making sure that no-one will pay tax on their first £10,000 they earn, and to radically change our corrupt parliamentary political system once and for all by allowing voters to give politicians their marching orders – for good!

The speech was well received by Liberal Democrats within the conference hall and throughout the country; I am sure that many people are now thinking of voting for the Lib Dems for the very first at the forthcoming elections – you can now be assured that your vote will not be a wasted vote.

Please take time to read the email from Nick Clegg:  

 Dear Ian,

I’m not the kingmaker.

45 million voters are the kingmakers.

Today I’ve used my keynote speech to our Spring Conference in Birmingham to make that one very simple, very important point. Some days the papers say our party is doing a deal with Labour. Some days the Conservatives. But they can’t predict the future. I can’t predict the future.

Voters should give politicians their marching orders - not the other way around.

We’ve made it clear how our Party will change Britain.

Under the Liberal Democrats, no-one will pay tax on the first £10,000 they earn. That’s the most fundamental change to the tax system for decades.

We will give every child the fair start they deserve, by reducing class sizes and increasing one to one tuition in our schools.

We’ll rebalance the economy so that Britain is no longer just betting on things, but Britain starts building things again.

And we will build a clean, open, fair politics.

Things don’t have to be the way they are. The coming election is a chance to get fairness and to get change.

Almost 1 in 4 voters chose the Liberal Democrats at the last election. If that increased to 1 in 3, we could lead the next government.

That is what we can achieve together. Thank you for all you are doing to bring it about.

With all best wishes,

Nick Clegg MP
Leader of the Liberal Democrats

PS. As the election draws closer there is a role for everyone to play in our movement. Thank you for everything you are doing. But if you can make a donation or volunteer to help your local party, it will make a huge difference.

Speaking shortly after the Liberal Democrat Leader’s speech to his party conference, the Former Liberal Democrat Leader, Lord Ashdown rejected assertions that Nick Clegg is in a weak position ahead of the general election and criticised media speculation about a hung parliament.

“It’s a wonderful position, I have never known the party to be in a better position before an election, I have never known the party to be so united behind its leader,” Lord Ashdown said.

“That was a cracking speech, certainly the best he has given,” he said referring to Nick Clegg’s conference speech.

Lord Ashdown said media speculation about a hung parliament was “boring” the voters and going against the “national mood”.

“If you really want to play Mystic Meg and look at the polls and the crystal ball, we can do that, but I don’t think it’s what the voters want,” Lord Ashdown said.

He added that the electoral system in the

.

West Midlands Euro MP Liz Lynne has formally opened the Liberal Democrats’ first national conference to be held in Birmingham.

More than 2,000 Liberal Democrat members and 3,000 media and exhibitors have converged on the International Convention Centre for the Spring Conference of the party, the first time the Liberal Democrats have held their federal conference in Birmingham.

In her inaugural speech at 9am this morning, Liz Lynne formally opened the event with a rallying call for the party to win new seats in Birmingham and across the region in the General Election due within weeks.

She paid tribute to the leadership shown by John Hemming as the city’s first LibDem MP and Paul Tilsley, now deputy leader of the city council and said that the Liberal Democrats had helped to transform the city in recent years to become one of the most dynamic in Europe.

Liz Lynne said: “Labour has offered only false dawn and disappointment, both in their 20 years of power on the Council and 13 years in government.

“But the Conservatives do not offer a tempting alternative. The last Conservative Government presided over two devastating recessions which hit the West Midlands hard. Now, under Labour, we have the worst recession for 80 years.

“Birmingham and the West Midlands has been let down time and time again. The factory at Washwood Heath that made the Pendolino trains - and most London tube trains too - closed. Austin Rover at Longbridge - closed. LDV vans - closed.

“And Cadburys, we had billions of pounds from taxpayer-owned banks being used to fund the takeover nobody wanted.”

“We still have a world class manufacturing capability here, with Jaguar Land Rover now embracing a green future with worldbeating new designs - though they too are having to consolidate with one plant at either Castle Bromwich or Solihull likely to close.

“This recession has hit us hard, make no mistake. In December, it was announced that youth unemployment in Birmingham was now 25% - one in four - the highest of any city in Britain.

“But despite that, Birmingham is changing and still growing. Over the last 50 years it has become one of the most culturally diverse and economically dynamic cities in Europe. We welcome that diversity.

“The last time many of you came to Birmingham might have been the Hodge Hill by election six years ago - where many people commented on the dirty streets, blocked waste chutes in council high rise flats, and money drained from schools.

“That was the reality of life under Labour. Is it any wonder that the voters of Birmingham turned away? Look around now - this city is changing, politics is changing and it is the Liberal Democrats shaping that change. In the Partnership administration, the city is cleaner and greener, crime is falling and services are more efficient.”

“Following the hard work of John Hemming and the hard work of Lorely Burt MP just next door in Solihull, the Liberal Democrats have a superb team of candidates challenging to win right across Birmingham, from Jerry Evans in Hall Green, Tariq Khan in Hodge Hill to Karen Hamilton in Perry Barr, to name but a few.

“Across the city, we are the only choice for change, for fairness and reform. There are just two months to go before the General Election and we are putting our final touches to our policies. I know you will support the programme for fairness that Nick Clegg and Vince Cable have made the centre of our campaign. On behalf of Birmingham Liberal Democrats, welcome, enjoy, and get ready for the General Election.”

Willenhall North Liberal Democrat councillors Val Woodruff, Ian Shires and Pete Hughes have called on the Safer Walsall Partnership to resolve deep-seated anti social behaviour issues along the linear walkway that was the old mineral railway line from the Beacon Estate in the North and and the walkway between Littleton Road Forest Gate and Coltham Road in the South.

Last week councillors, along with representatives from the Partnership and the Police walked the length of the walkways to see for themselves the extent of the abuse that this area is being subjected too.

Virtually the whole length was strewn with litter, cans, garden rubbish, old furniture and there was evidence of illegal activity where plastic had been burned off copper wire and areas where the walkway had been churned up by Quad Bikes and trail bikes.

In the sort term, a massive clean up of the area is to be organised. This will be followed up with plans which will involve the local community in medium to long term solutions to transform the walkways into the attractive amenity that all can enjoy. 

With the announcement recently of plans for a high-speed rail link between Birmingham and London the need for a train station for Willenhall becomes a top priority, say Willenhall Liberal Democrats.

“Now more than ever,we need to have good transport links between Birmingham and the Black Country” said Willenhall South campaigner Dan Barker.

“A train station for Willenhall is a must if the people of Willenhall and local business are to benefit from the 68,000 new jobs predicted by experts KPMG across the West Midlands” said Dan.

Liberal Democrat Parliamentary Candidate for Walsall North and former Willenhall South Focus Team member Nadia Fazal said “The benefits for the local economy and job creation would be a major boost for Willenhall. The only negative comments to the idea have come from the Tories.”

West Midlands Liberal Democrat MEP Liz Lynne who has long campaigned for a high-speed rail link between the West Midlands, London and beyond welcomed the news. “We need to move away from a growing dependence on air travel  within the UK and to major cities in the EU. An expansion of the high-speed rail network will make a significant difference to our carbon footprint” said Liz.

“Vote for what you believe in… or you will wake up on May 7th facing another five years of more of the same,” said the Liberal Democrat Leader.

Shall I tell you the one phrase that bothers me more than any other? It’s this.
“That’s just the way things are”.
No. The way things are is not the way they have to be.
 
We do not have to live in a country where the poorest pay the biggest chunk of their income in tax. We do not have to live in a country where politics is the plaything of wealthy donors and corrupt MPs. We do not have to live in a country where the banks can profiteer at the expense of everybody else and our climate is in jeopardy. We do not have to live in a country where children’s chances are determined more by their parents’ background than by their own hopes and dreams.

There is a better way.
 
Imagine instead a primary school with classes of just 20 pupils. Imagine being able to take home the first £10,000 you earn completely free of income tax. Imagine a generation of young people finding work in thriving local manufacturing companies. Imagine being able to sack corrupt MPs, instead of just shouting at them on TV. Imagine knowing your vote counts. Imagine it.

These are not dreams. They are ambitions. Our ambitions. And they are ambitions which can come true if we do things differently.
 
But we will never do things differently as long as the job of governing this country remains a game of pass-the-parcel between the two old parties. For 65 years now we have had Labour and Conservative governments. First the blue team. Then the red. Then blue, then red, and yet nothing really changes. The same old promises, always broken.

No wonder people feel let down. No wonder people feel they shouldn’t expect too much. The old parties have drained our ambition to do things differently. They seem to say: we’ve been in charge for decades – don’t now start hoping for more. That’s just the way things are. No.
 
This year’s election is a huge opportunity. Everybody knows, in their heart of hearts, that we need real change. Everybody knows that the way we got here is not the way out.
 
The time to believe in our ambitions starts today. The time to do something different in politics. The time to fight for a fairer Britain. The time to bring real change. It starts today. Change that works for you.

Something really important has been happening in our politics for years. Something big – but gradual – so you wouldn’t notice it from day to day. There is a vast and growing army of people who look at the two old parties and say “no thanks.” People who, like me, like you, want something different.

In 1951, only 2% of voters chose someone other than Labour or the Conservatives. At the last general election, it was 32%.
 
Now, a gimmick here, or a lucky break there may boost Labour or Conservative poll ratings for a few weeks or months, but it cannot, and will not reverse the trend. Who seriously believes that the British people, offered so much choice in every aspect of our daily lives, will ever again settle for a two-party system? If you have two parties, you only ever have two ideas. Actually that’s on a good day. Most of the time they can’t even rustle up a single good idea between them.
 
Labour: the party of the many. The many disasters. You know their new slogan: a future fair for all.
If that sounds familiar, that’s because they’ve used it before. Seven years ago. Well based on what’s happened since then: it isn’t a slogan – it’s a warning. It’s like advertising a second trip on the Titanic. Gordon Brown’s unsinkable economy. Actually, there is one thing I have to give Gordon Brown credit for: He handled Piers Morgan a lot better than I did.
 
As for the Conservatives: the world’s first offshore political party. It used to be a British party. Now it’s a wholly-owned subsidiary of Lord Ashcroft, a man who collects tax havens the way some people collect beer mats. How can David Cameron claim to clean up politics, when he can’t even clean up his own party chairman? The label still says Made in Britain, but the money says Made in Belize.
 
With these two old parties, it is a dismal choice between the party of the few and the party of no-one. A choice between the wrong direction and backwards. They haven’t noticed people are tired of being told there are only two answers to every question. They haven’t noticed people are ready for something new. Ready for something different. And ready to make it happen.

We have had a great weekend. Coming together, here in Birmingham. To vote through the four big promises that will be the heart of our manifesto. Fair taxes that put money back in your pocket. A fair start at school for every child. A fair economy: protecting and creating jobs by reforming the banks and investing in a green future. And a fair deal for you from politicians, cleaning up and clearing out the rotten old system.
 
We have been rigorous in focusing ourselves on these four pledges. We understand that the days of shopping list manifestos are over. The economic and financial circumstances mean we must choose. To focus on what is essential, and not promise more than we can afford. The party which will win the argument during this General Election will be the party which strikes the right balance between generosity and restraint, hope and realism, spending and saving.
 
That is why I make no apology in stating bluntly that we will never take risks with the public finances. Whether we like it or not, we will have to fix the mess Gordon Brown has made. Without sanity in spending, we won’t be able to protect our public services. We won’t be able to give our brave troops the equipment and support they so desperately need in Afghanistan. We won’t be able to provide the fairness we want for all. The question facing us is not whether to cut the deficit. It is how and when.
 
Everyone who’s ever cut back a tree knows there are many ways to do it. You can cut back badly and kill the tree. Or you can do it in a way that helps the tree to flourish in the future. Encouraging growth in a new direction. So as we reduce the deficit. We must cut in a way that does not make the country less fair.  Or less green. That does not jeopardise front line services in the NHS and schools we all depend on. And does not choke off recovery.
 
Labour is in denial about the need for cuts. This week Alistair Darling and Gordon Brown confirmed the pre election budget won’t include any more details on how to bring the deficit under control.
No courage. No honesty.
Just a miserable attempt to save their own skins.
 
Meanwhile the Conservatives have started to make threats. David Cameron, George Osborne and Ken Clarke marched into the City of London the other day and declared that if voters didn’t give them the result they want, the markets would tear the house down.
Cynical. Desperate.

The Tories think they’re entitled to victory – the moment they feel it slipping from their grasp, they start lashing out. It’s a political version of a protection racket: do what we want, or else.
 
Liberal Democrats are, I believe, the guarantor of good sense. After all, we are the party of Vince Cable. We are the guarantor – whatever the outcome of the election – that no risks will be taken with Britain’s financial position. Liberal Democrats have gone further than any political party in identifying cuts – we will be setting out a programme of savings of £15bn a year by 2012. From ending government contributions to Child Trust Funds to removing the top 20% of claimants from the tax credit system. From cancelling the ID card programme to abolishing the Government Offices for the Regions. We have put together, line by line, the most substantial and deliverable programme of deficit reduction in British politics. And we have taken the bold step of cutting back, dramatically, our proposals for new spending.

Postponing ideas that have long been close to our hearts but which are not immediately affordable. So we can put two thirds of the money we save straight into reducing the deficit.
 
It is the first time in our history that Liberal Democrats have ever set out a plan for net reductions in government spending. But I am the first to admit that it does not go far enough. There will be more to do, and we will have to find these savings together, as a nation. Our plan is a down payment – a declaration of intent. Your guarantee that Liberal Democrats are putting Britain’s financial future at the heart of our plans for government.

People often ask me what the Liberal Democrats will do after the General Election. I’m flattered that people think I can predict the future. The newspapers certainly think they can. Some days I read we’re planning a deal with Labour. Some days that we’re planning a deal with the Conservatives. Other days that we’ll refuse to talk to anyone at all. Yet, when all the speculation is said and done, I keep coming back to some simple truths:
I am not the kingmaker.
The 45 million voters of Britain are the kingmakers.
They give the politicians their marching orders, not the other way round.
It’s called democracy – and I kind of like it.
 
Almost 1 in 4 voters chose the Liberal Democrats at the last election. If that increased to 1 in 3, we could lead the next government. This election is a time for voters to choose, not a time for politicians to play footsie with each other. The party which gets the strongest mandate from the voters will have the moral authority to be the first to seek to govern. And voters are entitled to know what Liberal Democrats will do – in whatever situation we find ourselves in.

This weekend we’ve given the answer:
We will give you fairer taxes. We will make sure your child gets the fair start in life they deserve.
We will create a new, fair economy where we are no longer held hostage by the greed of bankers in the City of London. And we will give you a fair, open and transparent politics after the gross betrayal of the expenses scandal. It really is as simple as that. No-one can guarantee what the election result will be. But I can guarantee what we will always fight to deliver.
 
And if you like what we say. If you share our values. If you want fair taxes, a fair start in life for your child, a fairer economy, and a new, fair politics. Vote for it.

Tax

One of the biggest changes we offer is to your tax bill. My philosophy on tax is simple. A fair tax system is one that rewards hard work, enterprise and initiative. It penalises pollution and other threats to the common good. It bears down on unearned wealth. That is what we will deliver.
 
Under the Liberal Democrats, no-one will pay tax on the first £10,000 they earn. Let me repeat that: Because this is one of the most substantial changes to tax that a party has ever offered at a General Election. Under the Liberal Democrats, no-one will pay tax on the first £10,000 they earn.
 
We’re not talking about tinkering or tweaking. We’re talking about fundamental, substantial and irreversible reform. Under the Liberal Democrats, no-one will pay tax on the first £10,000 they earn.
 
3.6 million people will be freed from paying tax altogether. Tens of millions more on low and middle incomes will get a tax cut of £700 back in their pockets. A real change to deliver lasting tax fairness for everyone.
 
The Conservatives may want tax cuts for millionaires. We will deliver tax cuts for millions.
 
But it has to be paid for. No-one is going to fall for a false promise of a giveaway. So we will make five simple, but substantial changes to pay for this tax cut. One: Equalising pensions tax relief so top earners no longer get more than everyone else. Two: Equalising Capital Gains Tax with Income Tax so people who make their money trading shares and properties pay the same rates as everyone else. Three: An increase in aviation taxes. Four: A crack down on tax avoidance. And finally – a new mansion tax on properties worth over £2m. This is one tax even oligarchs and billionaires will not be able to avoid. You can’t put a mansion in a briefcase and take it to Belize.
 
Just imagine the difference this change would make. You know anyone working full time on the minimum wage pays more than a £1000 in income tax every year? Under the Liberal Democrats, their tax bill will plummet to less than £6 a week. They’ll be £700 better off. £700 to pay for children’s school clothes, to fix the car, to pay the heating bill.

That is change that works for you.
 
Children

Liberal Democrats will give every child the fair start they deserve. By reducing class sizes and increasing one to one tuition in our schools. Children have to be nurtured and cherished, right from the start.
 
Miriam and I know this as parents of three lovely little boys. We see for ourselves that what happens to our 8 and 5 year old boys in the classroom has a dramatic effect on their enthusiasm to learn and their self confidence which will shape them for the rest of their lives.
 
Mind you, I think both Miriam and I were a little surprised when our eight year old son declared the other day that he had a plan for winning the election. He’d been counting up his pocket money, and suggested we could pay everybody off to vote for us. It’s not so much the suggestion I mind, it more that he’s clearly giving his best ideas to Lord Ashcroft first.
 
But as much as children depend on us today. We are going to depend on them for far longer. Think about a child in your local primary school, doing experiments with egg cartons and elastic bands. That child could be the inventor of a cure for cancer which saves your life thirty years from now.
 
We don’t know what the future holds. We don’t know what our children will achieve. All we know is that our country is still not a place truly fit for them to grow up in.
 
Labour’s target for school achievement is to ensure that at least three out of every 10 children in a school get five good GCSEs. Three out of every 10. Imagine being in a class where just passing means you are the exception. We are teaching our children to drop their expectations. Telling them to aim low.

It has to change.
 
Liberal Democrats are the only party promising new investment in our schools. We’ll be putting more money, £2.5 billion every year, into schools to pay for more teachers, better discipline and catch-up classes. An average primary school could cut class sizes to just 20, ensuring children starting out at school have the personal, nurturing relationship with their teacher they need. An average secondary school could put the money into catch-up classes for 160 pupils. Making sure no child is ever left behind.

That is change that works for you.
 
Economy

The recession has hurt millions of families. But the problems run deeper than just the immediate crisis. For too long, a succession of Conservative and Labour Governments have been obsessed about looking after just one square mile – the City of London. It’s time to invest in the other 100,000 square miles of Britain. Creating jobs and growth that lasts for every town, city and village of this country.
 
After the economic crisis that rocked the world. We must not rebuild the fortresses of old. We must use this as an opportunity to build something new. Not least to ensure we can pass on to our children a planet worth living on. We now know that the next few years are probably our last chance to avert unstoppable climate change. This is not a problem, it is an emergency. It must guide everything we do as we rebalance our economy.
 
Growth that lasts does not threaten our children’s future. It recognises that our planet is a gift that must be cherished. That tomorrow is our responsibility as much as today.
 
And growth that lasts does not leave an underclass behind. It brings everyone along, sharing prosperity – because the more people are included. the more people are enabled to seize opportunities, the more prosperity there is for all.
 
But we cannot have a new kind of growth with the old kind of banks. It is time to break them up.
Bring back competition. Bring back diversity. Bring back building societies.
 
And until we do it we should insist that banks pay a premium on their profits to the taxpayers who have bailed them out. We will separate low risk utility banking from high risk investment finance once and for all. So banks never again take insane risks which jeopardise your everyday savings.
 
Some people say it is impossible to split the banks like this. They’re usually – you guessed it – the bankers themselves. The governor of the Bank of England says it is not only possible but essential to break up the banks. He’s right. They’re wrong. Only the Liberal Democrats say: The banking industry, no industry, must ever again occupy such a privileged position that it can hold a gun to the head of rest of the economy. Never again.
 
But reforming the banks should not be an act of retribution. It is about getting money flowing to the thousands of businesses starved of credit today. Without support from banks, companies go bust, and the jobless remain without hope.
 
I was staggered when I heard that RBS, a bank we own, was lending millions of pounds to help Kraft buy Cadbury. A great Birmingham company. RBS was funding this deal which everybody knew would cost jobs in Britain. While small business customers of this very bank were being turned down for loans or charged extortionate rates. This was a scandal. And Labour let it happen. When we bailed out the banks: Did you ever imagine your money would be used to put British people out of work? Only Liberal Democrats say: never again.
 
Once the banks are lending again. We can turn our attention not just to protecting jobs, but to creating new ones. In our first year in office, we will use the money from that banking levy. And the money from reforming tax credits. To create as many as 100,000 jobs in green industries. Kick-starting the economy on a new, sustainable footing.
 
I was standing in a shipyard on the Tyne just a few weeks ago. It was deserted. And I thought back to the days gone by when it would have been humming with activity. It’s heartbreaking to think of that decline. And the devastating impact it had on whole communities.
 
But it is inspiring to imagine these old shipyards. Once the pride of Britain. Coming back to life as a hub for building the vast new turbines needed for offshore wind and tidal energy. Helping to power Britain and Europe with clean, safe energy for all.
 
Britain used to lead the world. We built ships. We designed railways. We laid the first telegraph cables across the oceans. This is the nation of Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone. Of Isaac Newton, who made modern science possible. Of Isambard Kingdom Brunel, the greatest civil engineer in history.
 
We have to harness that inventive spirit once again. We have been blinded for too long by the glitz of the financial services sector. Blinded to the real, solid virtue of making things. It has to change. Under the Liberal Democrats, it will change. No longer just betting on things. We will start Britain building things again. That is change that works for you.
 
Politics

But there’s something standing in the way of change. Our political system. All the pomp and ceremony of our Parliament. All the adorably daft rituals. Have been camouflage for corruption.
 
It is just plain wrong that a government elected by the votes of just 22% of people can rule however it likes. It is just plain wrong that a government can commit us to an illegal war against the will of the people. It is just plain wrong that some MPs were so out of touch with the basic principles of right and wrong that they thought it was ok to do up house after house at taxpayers’ expense, flip them and flog them off for a profit.
 
People say all politicians are the same. They are not.

Of course, Liberal Democrats are not perfect. But no Liberal Democrat MP “flipped” their home in this way. None of our outer London MPs even claimed a second home allowance. And it was Liberal Democrats who fought against Tory and Labour attempts to keep the whole scandal hidden in the first place. So don’t let them tell you we are all the same because it isn’t true.
 
Liberal Democrats are the only party that understands expenses were just the tip of the iceberg. Our whole political system is a mess. David Cameron and Gordon Brown talk about political reform. But they won’t even contemplate the really radical changes we need.
 
Only Liberal Democrats will get big money and corrupt donors out of politics altogether. Change the voting system to abolish safe seats and make every vote count. Reduce the number of MPs by 150.
Reverse the tide of decades of centralisation. Devolve power over the police and NHS to local communities. Pass a freedom bill to protect our hard-won rights and liberties from the whims of government ministers. And give constituents the right to sack corrupt MPs.

That is change that works for you.
 
Conclusion

Four steps to a fairer Britain:
Fair taxes.
A new, fair start for all children at school.
A rebalanced, fair and green economy.
And clean, open, fair politics.
 
For Gordon Brown, change is what you promise when you want everything to stay the same. For David Cameron, change stops on May 7th. It’s change for him, not change for you. We are different.
 
I want to warn you about something that is coming in the next few weeks. We are going to hear a nonsensical claim from the two old parties. Designed to scare people into voting against their best interests. The Conservatives will say: vote Lib Dem… get Brown. Labour will say: vote Lib Dem… get Cameron.

Don’t believe it for a second. They are wrong.
Vote Lib Dem… get change.
Vote Lib Dem… get fairness.
A vote for the Liberal Democrats is not a vote for anyone else.
It is your guarantee of real change that works for you.
 
A vote for the Liberal Democrats is a commitment to hope and opportunity.
It’s a vote that says:
I want government to be honest and open.
I want a green economy.
I want fairer taxes.
I want a fairer future for my children and for all our children.
 
I know there are many people who listen to the Liberal Democrats and really like what they hear.
But you worry that your vote would be wasted. You worry that your choice won’t make enough of a difference. So you are thinking of giving your vote to someone else. Some people are thinking of holding their noses and voting for Brown just to keep out the Conservatives. I say to you: don’t do it.

Some people are thinking of holding their noses and voting for Cameron just to get rid of Labour. Don’t do it. You have a once in a generation opportunity for real change.
A wasted vote is one that throws that opportunity away.
A wasted vote is one for a party that is stuck in the past.
A wasted vote is one for a party you don’t believe in.
 
How do you want to feel when you wake up on May 7th and hear the news? Would you smile at the prospect of five more years of Gordon Brown? Would you be thrilled if a Conservative government was now in charge?

If the answer is no, then don’t give them your vote. If you vote for less… you will get less. If you compromise on them… they will compromise on you. Just good enough – is not good enough any more.
 
When you think about who to vote for remember that the future of your country is at stake. Whatever you do… do not settle for the way things are.

Be demanding.
Vote for what you believe in.
Vote with your heart.
 
If you once voted Labour but have lost hope. If you once voted Conservative but don’t know what they stand for any longer. If you have given up voting altogether because nothing ever seems to change. Vote for something different this time.
 
Vote Lib Dem: get fairness.
Vote Lib Dem: get change.
Vote for what you believe in… or you will wake up on May 7th facing another five years of more of the same.
This is your chance.
This is your opportunity – for the sake of our future, do not waste it.
 
Choose the Liberal Democrats

Liberal Democrat Spring Conference today backed plans to rebalance the economy and create thousands of new green jobs.

The plans will play a vital part in a fair recovery that locks in investment and ensures a path of low-carbon growth.

The plans for a green economic stimulus package are a core part of the Liberal Democrat election manifesto and include:

·        Immediate investment to expand our green energy infrastructure

·        Bringing hundreds of thousands of empty homes back into use

·        Insulating schools and other public buildings

·        An ‘eco-cashback’ scheme to reward people who make energy efficiency improvements in their homes

·        A National Infrastructure Bank to promote long-term investment in sustainable public transport and renewable energy

Commenting, Liberal Democrat Shadow Energy and Climate Change Secretary Simon Hughes said:

“The Liberal Democrats have set out a blueprint for a fair economy that’s fit to last.

“A green stimulus package will help boost investment in clean energy, reduce fuel bills and create thousands of new jobs.

“Labour and the Tories can’t be trusted to deliver the green growth we need.

“Only the Liberal Democrats have bold and credible plans to rebalance the economy and put Britain at the forefront of this vital transition.”

Liberal Democrat Spring Conference today passed plans to clean up politics and urgently create a fairer and more local political system.

The proposals include:
 
 - A fairer voting system
 
 - A requirement for those who stand for Parliament or sit in the House of Lords to pay tax in Britain
 
 - A fully elected second chamber
 
 - The right for voters to sack their MP
 
 Commenting, Liberal Democrat Manifesto Chair, Danny Alexander said:
 
“Our broken political system desperately needs to be cleaned up.  Public confidence in politics is at an all time low, and the way the country is governed needs urgent reform.  
 
“The Liberal Democrats have passed plans today to make politics fairer, local and more transparent.  
 
“Labour has had 13 years to change our broken politics, and it’s failed to do so.
 
“Only the Liberal Democrats would end safe seats, reform the voting system and give local people a real say over how their neighbourhoods are governed.”

David Cameron had failed a key test of character and leadership by failing to confront Lord Ashcroft over his broken promises said the Liberal Democrat shadow Home Secretary Chris Huhne.

The full text of the speech is below:

Conference, I have been in our party for 29 years – almost a generation – and I am just as angry at our unfair voting system today as I was when I joined. 

The first general election I fought was in 1983  - I lost three times before I started winning – when we won almost as many votes as Labour but just a tenth the seats.
 
That election night, I knew this is not right.
 
It is not fair.
 
It is no way to run a democracy.
 
Since then, the system has got even worse. 
 
This Labour government has won more than half the MPs with just a third of those who voted, and a fifth of those entitled to vote.
 
No majority government has ever been elected with less support.
 
We have a parliament that reflects our nation as badly as a distorting fairground mirror, a muddle of bulges.
 
This voting system means that we can predict now about half of the MPs in the next parliament.
 
The seats are so safe that the only real contest is for the party ticket.
In safe seats, the general election is just a charade.
 
And we know about human nature.
 
Give someone a job for life, and they will take advantage.
 
Dip their fingers in the till.
 
Clean a moat.
 
Buy a duck house.
 
Claim for a non-existent mortgage.
 
MPs in safe seats were three times as likely to have fiddled their expenses as MPs in battleground seats.
 
Remember not a single Liberal Democrat MP flipped their home.
 
Not a single Lib Dem MP avoided capital gains tax.
 
Not a single Lib Dem MP in London claimed a second home allowance at all.
 
I don’t say we got everything right, but our respect for public money is bred by winning our seats vote by hard-won vote.
 
It’s why we have not been involved in the worst expenses abuses.
 
It is why Liberal Democrat MPs claim lower personal expenses than Labour or Tory MPs.
 
It is also why the same discipline should apply to every MP.
 
Let’s abolish safe seats.
 
Labour has taken a teeny step in the right direction by arguing for one-two-three voting.
 
Talk about deathbed conversions.
 
Thirteen years doing nothing, and it takes the spectre of defeat to spur them to do anything.
 
But so little, so late.
 
True, preference votes remove the need for tactical voting.
 
They let people vote honestly for who they want, without fearing that they will let in who they hate.
 
But they still leave us with far too many safe seats, and the political parties will still decide who stands and wins in Toffshire South or Labour rotten borough North.
 
Instead, our Liberal Democrat system will give every voter the choice of two or more candidates for each party in a three to five MP constituency.
 
Of course, you could still vote to change the party in power.
 
But you could also keep the same party, but vote for another MP.
 
Voters will have the power to vote for the person as well as the party.
 
In Ireland, the professional politicians hate this system.
 
Why?
 
Because a third of those who lose their seats lose to members of their own party, not the opposition.
 
For the first time, every MP will have a strong incentive to answer the letters of their constituents, take up cases, champion local interests and causes.
That’s the real local link.
 
Nor does a representative parliament mean weak government.
 
Greece is the country in most financial trouble, and yet it always has single party government.
 
Britain is next in line, and so have we since 1945.
 
So which part of strong government do David Cameron and Gordon Brown most like?
 
The boom and the bust?
 
The legislative diarrhoea?
 
Or the illegal war in Iraq?
 
Take crime.
 
It is not a sign of strength that the Government has created 4300 new criminal offences since 1997.
 
We do not need these useless laws.
 
Some 60 criminal justice bills.
 
Nine immigration bills.
 
This is the political equivalent of attention-deficit disorder.
 
We need less law and better law.
Law that is properly scrutinised, settled and long lasting.
 
We need a simple penal code that magistrates, police officers and offenders can understand.
 
And we need a focus on what works to cut crime.
 
Liberal Democrats will take no lessons from the Tories or Labour on crime.
 
In Lib Dem council areas, preventive measures have pushed crime down further and faster than anywhere else.
 
In Tory areas, crime is down since the peak by 16 per cent.
 
In Lib Dem areas, it is down 20 per cent.
 
Imagine what more we could do in Government.
 
Labour and the Tories love to posture about tough penalties.
 
But penalties cannot make a blind bit of difference when only one in a hundred crimes ends in a court conviction.
 
The real deterrent is the fear of getting caught, and that means more police on the beat.
 
We are the only party committed to raising police numbers.
 
That means better policing by raising standards.
 
It means prison that reforms offenders, and does not enroll them in a college course in crime.
 
**
 
Whether on crime, or taxes, or the economy, fair politics must surely mean a battle of ideas, not bank balances.
 
As Nick has pointed out, the Ashcroft scandal shows why we must clean up party funding.
 
A billionaire baron from Belize has bought the Tory party like a banana republic, and it stinks.
 
Ashcroft made solemn and binding undertakings to become a permanent resident, and then broke them.
 
He does not pay full British taxes, but he thinks that he should pass laws for those of us that do.
 
Ashcroft wants to run the club, but not pay the sub.
 
This scandal tells us a lot about David Cameron.
 
He would not stand up to Ashcroft.
 
We named and shamed Ashcroft as a non-dom at prime minister’s questions, but even then Cameron failed to ask his over-mighty baron whether he was keeping his promises.
 
If that is the smack of strong management, heaven help the country if Cameron wins.
 
If he can’t clean up his own party, he is not fit for number 10.
 
We have heard a lot about bullying recently.
 
Real bullies sack the weak and suck up to the strong.
 
This was Cameron’s big test of character and leadership, and he failed.
 
He’s rattled.
 
He’s rumbled.
 
And he’s humbled.
 
And fair politics means local politics too.
 
Less power for the centre.
 
More power for Edinburgh and Cardiff.
 
More tax power for communities across England.
 
The business rate back to councils as a first step.
 
Elected health boards.
 
Elected police authorities with real powers to set the precept, and sack the Chief Constable.
 
Only local power can unleash the creativity that we need in tough times.
 
There are two parties in this election
arguing about changing faces and changing places, not changing Britain.
 
What matters is not playing ministerial musical chairs, but transforming the whole way we do politics.
 
By making every vote count, wherever you live, we will give every person in our nation a voice in its destiny.
 
Everyone, however rich or poor, low or high, will have their proper say.
 
You cannot build a fair society on an unfair voting system.
 
In this election, we have the chance of a generation to remake our politics and our society.
 
Don’t miss it.
 
Don’t mess up.
 
Don’t wake up on 7th May saying
“I wish I’d done more”.
 
Wake up saying
“Thank God I did enough.
We’ve won the power to build a fairer Britain.”

Liberal Democrat Spring Conference today backed plans to increase the threshold at which people start paying income tax from current levels to £10,000.

These plans would see the average person’s income tax bill cut by £700. Pensioners would be £100 better off and 3.6m people would no longer have to pay any income tax at all.

The party’s tax plans will be paid for by closing tax loopholes, making polluters pay and introducing a ‘mansion tax’ on homes worth over £2m.

Commenting, Liberal Democrat Shadow Chancellor, Vince Cable said:

“It’s high time that this country had a tax system that is fair for all.

“Gordon Brown created a tax system that has some of the lowest earners paying hundreds of pounds in taxes that they can ill afford while the very wealthiest treat tax as if it’s optional.

“For their part, the Tories flail around in confusion over their marriage tax plans and can only commit to a tax cut for millionaires.

“The Liberal Democrat plans are the most radical, far reaching tax reforms in a generation and embody everything that we stand for: fairness, protecting the environment, rewarding hard work.

“It is right to ask those with the broadest shoulders to bear a little more of the burden so that millions of people on normal earnings get the break they need.

“We all know that the country is in for some tough times ahead. But we believe that it is simply not possible to address the problem of an unsustainable budget deficit without parallel action to rebalance the tax system and eliminate the unfairness at its core.”

Liberal Democrat Shadow Housing Minister, Sarah Teather has today give a speech to Spring Conference setting out the party’s plans to bring hundreds of thousands of empty homes back into use.

The full text of the speech is below:

Conference, I blame the Labour party for disengagement with politics. 

Sure, expenses has been a total disaster, and has made people angry.

But actually, I don’t think that is where the rot set in.

It set in in 1997.
Just after the election.
It started the day Tony Blair got in his ministerial car and travelled to one of the poorest estates in the country and pledged to stand up for the forgotten people.

It started, in the euphoria and relief that we all felt when we finally saw the back of the Tories.

It started in the lonely journey of the loyal Labour voter, who stuck with them in the dark days of the Tories, and who heaved a sigh of relief when Labour came to power.

It started then, because every promise Blair made that day has since been broken, discarded, or left to whither away.

Labour forgot the forgotten people.
They forgot the people who elected them.
They forgot the people who needed them most.

And I am left wondering what the point is of a Labour Government.

They raise taxes on the poor.
They let the poorest children fail at school.
They stand idly by while families are destroyed by housing misery that they could easily fix.

Labour’s betrayal is where the rot set in.

The record speaks for itself.

1.8 million families languishing on housing waiting lists.
Three quarters of a million families in severe overcrowding.
One in ten children in my constituency in temporary accommodation.

I have spoken to families in my constituency with TB.
One family member picks it up on their travels, and when you live in an overcrowded damp Victorian hovel it isn’t long before the whole family gets it.

I have parents sharing beds with 8 and 9 year old children, because there is nowhere for the other child to sleep.

6 people in two bedroom flats,
Children with autism having to sleep in the living room with their brother,
Marriages devastated.
Education ruined.

How do they get away with this? For 13 years.

This is the Labour party.
This is what they have become.
This is their legacy.
The truth is, that housing is a deeply personal issue.
For too long, it has been swept under the carpet.
Until the Government feel they are losing votes over it, they think they can afford to keep on ignoring it.

A few weeks ago, the London Evening Standard began a campaign highlighting the hidden misery of thousands of Londoners stuck in poverty and poor housing.
It felt like a chink of light.
Thank God, finally a newspaper campaigning on housing.

We need housing on every front page.
It should be a political issue.
It should decide how people vote.
Labour must not be allowed to get away with this.
We will not allow Labour to get away with this.

Under Nick Clegg, we will be the only party going into this election promising a billion pound investment in this country’s housing stock. Because we understand that housing affects everything.

You can’t fix antisocial behaviour, or under performance at school, if children have nowhere to work or play.

It is no good having a great health service if the real cause of depression, chest disease, high blood pressure and goodness knows what else is actually the hideous stressful condition in which people are living.

This is fundamentally about fairness. Fairness for the poorest, fairness for our children, fairness for families.

Liberal Democrats, if we don’t make this case, nobody will.

We certainly won’t hear it from the Tories.

The Tories don’t know what they are talking about.
They have no idea how the other 90% live.
Scratch the surface and the old Tory party is alive and well.

A couple of weeks ago they issued a press release claiming that fifty percent of teenage girls in deprived areas are pregnant.
The figure was wrong. It was actually 5%.
But no-one in Conservative central office questioned it because it fitted with their stereotypes about poor people.

Just as it did when Chris Grayling claimed our inner cities are all like the US show the Wire.

They will do anything, say anything, to peddle their ‘Broken Britain’ slogan.
The Conservative party love to demonise the poor.

No, the Tories think the only way to solve the housing crisis is to change the law so that it is easier for big developers to stuff vulnerable families in to houses the size of shoe boxes.

That, and persistent rumours about their secret plans to whack up rents for social tenants to private market levels.
That would be a disaster.

Last year, a young woman came to visit me.
She had been on the housing waiting list for years.
In that time, she had taken a degree and was absolutely desperate to work full time.
But she couldn’t afford to work, because if she did, she would lose the benefit that paid her exorbitant private rent.

She had done a calculation of all the money she had received in housing benefit while she had been waiting.
Look – she said – they could have built me a house!

If you abolish subsidised rents for Council and housing association homes, all that is going to happen is that many more people will end up on housing benefit, and many fewer people will be able to work.

Put poor people into worse housing, and make them pay more for it.
That’s it. That’s the Tory big idea.
 
The Tories have been colluding in keeping housing off the political agenda because they have nothing to say.

What frustrates me so much is that the Government can do something about the appalling cases I see in my advice surgeries every week.
This isn’t an insoluble problem.
It isn’t free, and it can’t be fixed overnight.
But it can be done.

There are things we would do. Things we would do now.

While millions of families wait for housing, 650,000 properties sit empty in England alone.
Empty, ignored and slowly falling to pieces.
Everyone in the country can tell you about a house near them that no one lives in.
It is a scandal that the Government just lets these precious homes rot.

Empty properties are a scar on our communities.
They invite squatting, antisocial behaviour, and bring down the whole street.
Just think how a family living with overcrowding feels when they see a property all boarded up.

It’s time we made use of the homes we have.

The Liberal Democrats will invest £1.4billion in bringing a quarter of a million of these homes back into use.

Think what that money could achieve.
50,000 builders, joiners, plumbers, electricians, carpenters back in work.
A shot in the arm for the construction industry.
Streets across the country smartened up.
Squatters replaced by families desperate for a home.

That would be the difference under the Liberal Democrats.

The alternative doesn’t bear thinking about.

When demand outstrips supply, prices go up.
That’s basic economics – even George Osborne could grasp that.

If we can’t keep up with housing demand as we come out of recession, prices go up, people borrow more than they can afford, and bang, we are right back where we started.

If we lose all our construction workers in the recession because there is no work for them, we’ll never keep pace with demand.

It’s as if the government haven’t learned a thing from the past two years.
Investing in more housing will protect the economy and save a generation.

By making this billion pound promise the Liberal Democrats throw down the gauntlet to Labour and the Tories to do the same.

Liberal Democrats, we are the only party heading into this election promising to invest new money in housing.

We need to win so that we can deliver the housing people so desperately need.

The 1.8 million families languishing on the housing waiting list haven’t won under Labour.

The young couple still forced to live with their parents haven’t won under Labour.

The family living six to a room in conditions akin to Victorian England have not won under Labour.

Perhaps it was inevitable that the Labour party would forget the forgotten people.
The collectivist roots of the Labour party lends easily to sweeping individual rights under the carpet in the name of the supposed greater good.
The trouble is that the only greater good the Labour party still believe in is winning their fourth term.
They have forgotten that winning isn’t just about winning.

We won’t forget the people who elected us because that is the nature of our politics. People, individuals, their stories, their concerns is at the heart of what Liberal Democracy is about.

We will win for the people who need us most.
And we will win where no one expects us to.
We will win because we can give people hope again.

Hope that things can change.
Hope for a fairer country.
Hope for real justice for those stuck at the bottom.

We can re-ignite hope in the millions of people who have given up on the power of politics to change their lives.

We have the policies, the principles and the passion to turn a disillusioned voter into a positive vote for change.

And that’s why, when we are out day after day, knocking, stuffing, delivering, phoning.
When we are using energy even we didn’t know we could muster, that’s what keeps us going.

Conference, Labour have failed and the Tories haven’t really changed.
This is our time.

We must deliver.

Our job is to go out there and persuade people that voting changes things.

So let’s go out and do it.

Liberal Democrat Spring Conference today endorsed plans for a new international body to coordinate efforts for a stronger deal on climate change.

The authority would sit in permanent session and bring coherence to efforts to reach a binding and enforceable agreement on emissions cuts.

The motion passed by Conference also:

• Called for a floor price for carbon to stabilise the carbon market and promote higher levels of investment in the low carbon economy
• Reaffirmed the Liberal Democrat commitment to a 40% emissions cut by 2020 and the goals of the 10:10 campaign

Commenting, Liberal Democrat Shadow Energy and Climate Change Secretary, Simon Hughes said:

“There’s no question that Copenhagen was a failure of international leadership. But it also exposed the weakness and fragmentation of a bewildering institutional framework.

“Getting a good deal on climate change will be all but impossible without a strong world environment body with the clout to bang heads together.

“The current mishmash of institutions, agreements and treaties is diluting efforts to make the politics fit the science.

“If the WTO can adjudicate on trade disputes, then surely the time has come for a UN body that can break the climate deadlock.”

 Liberal Democrat Deputy Leader and Shadow Chancellor, Vince Cable today addressed delegates at the Liberal Democrat Spring Conference – the last conference before the General Election

In his speech, Vince Cable said that the Liberal Democrats are the party of fiscal responsibility and fairer taxes.

The full text of the speech is below:

I have a very simple message.

We, the Liberal Democrats, were right about the financial crisis.

We warned of the dangers and we led the debate when the crisis came.

And now we have a clear vision for the future of the British economy.

The Queen is said to have asked why no one warned about the crisis in the banking system. Actually, we did.

Ten years ago a group of us, Lib Dem activists, fought the demutualisation of building societies: a consequence of Conservative legislation which led to the disasters of Northern Rock, Bradford and Bingley and HBOS.

We told Gordon Brown to curb the excess profits of banks which were dependent on a taxpayer guarantee.

We warned him for years that he was in denial about the build up of household debt and the bubble in property prices. He took no notice; nor did the Conservatives.

But we were right.

And when financial disaster struck we insisted that there must be no nationalisation of losses and privatisation of profit: a point belatedly grasped by the government and even more belatedly, and reluctantly, by George Osborne and the Tories.

The government’s economic record speaks for itself: remember the phrases ‘no more boom and bust’, ‘prudence’, ‘Golden Rules’ – all abandoned.

And standing amid the wreckage of the economy Gordon Brown sounds more and more like Mr Ashley Cole saying – give me another chance.

What the public wants to know is who can guide the country out of the present morass: the broken, discredited, banking system; the deepest and longest post war recession, whose effects are far from over; and levels of government borrowing which are not sustainable.

We can.

We have deep, long term problems: an overdependence on banking; an obsession with property over productive investment; a yearning for high, Scandinavian levels, of public spending financed by low US levels of tax; and a financial aristocracy which regards tax paying as something for little people not themselves.

Let me make no bones about it – the challenges are enormous.

I start with the banks since they have been at the root of our recent problems.

Not all bankers were greedy or stupid, but plenty were and they have caused immense economic damage.

The damage continues because the banks have swung from the reckless over-lending which fuelled the boom to conservative under-lending deepening the slump.

Thousands of sound and solvent small and medium sized companies are being slowly throttled because they can’t get credit or it costs too much.

Banks do have a funding problem: all the more reason not to squander what they have on bonuses.

Banks, bailed out by us – the taxpayer – are also building up their balance sheets in readiness for an early re-privatisation instead of supporting British business.

RBS has fallen short of its legally binding lending target to British business.  Lloyd’s won’t even tell us.  That’s simply arrogant.

 I challenge them to give us the figures and Alistair Darling to force them to if they refuse.  Many thousands of British jobs depend on it. 

The need for radical reform doesn’t end there. Banks with global ambitions that are guaranteed by the British taxpayer cannot be allowed to run excessive risks again.

The Governor of the Bank of England has to be supported in his constant warning that banks that are too big to fail are simply too big. They have to be broken up, to increase competition and protect the taxpayer.

The banking collapse and recession have dug a deep hole in the government’s finances.

The next government will have to deal every single day with the consequences. The growing worry about sovereign debt means that there is no hiding place. Nor should there be.

It grates to have the economy held to ransom by currency speculators and the clowns in the rating agencies who missed the Icelandic crash and so badly misjudged the safety of banks. But any Government, of any hue, will have to depend on the markets to finance its deficit.

We must and will be fiscally responsible. 

Unlike the Tories and their cronies who want to create a financial panic and run on sterling to frighten people into voting for them on May 6th.  Playing fast and loose with the financial stability of this country for political gain – destabilising the markets – is dangerous, irresponsible and wrong. 

It is also irresponsible to engage in a phoney war over cuts weeks before an election that will affect the lives of millions of people.

The Government is trying to present itself as the party of spending and public investment but growing numbers of government scientists, FE college and university staff are currently being sacked.

The Tories were trying to project their economic team as ‘Slasher’ Osborne and the Hard Men - until David Cameron executed a giant slalom down the Swiss ski slopes and announced that cuts are off the agenda this year. For now.

Or at least that’s what I think they said.   I’d love to attempt a critique of the Tories budget plans but I have no idea what they are. I think the present line on the budget is: trust us and we’ll tell you after the election. Well I’m sorry but that simply isn’t good enough.

We have to be frank with people about the difficulties ahead.

Spending cuts must not be forced through too soon, making the recession worse. That is not just my view - Sir Alan Budd, the Conservatives’ designated head of fiscal policy thinks the same.

The timing and speed of cuts must reflect the state of the economy, not political dogma. But cuts there will be. We have spelled out some of them.

Serious public sector pay restraint for the next two years: no one with a pay rise over £8 a week and no bonuses at all.

Ending government contributions to the Child Trust Fund and cutting tax credits for high earners.

Axing unaffordable defence contracts such as Eurofighter, and the Trident replacement.   And others, subject to a rapid defence review.

Scaling back programs like HomeBuy, cutting back RDAs. Taking out tiers of burdensome regulation of local authorities, and scrapping undemocratic regional government.

Slashing a bloated central bureaucracy - kicking the consulting habit - and ending illiberal and costly government data bases: like ID cards and Contact Point. And we continue to look across all government departments for further savings. There can be no ring fencing if we are serious about getting the public finances back on track.

And there will be a levy on the profits of banks.

So far we have identified over £15bn per year of savings, most of which are to reduce the structural deficit and which we will be setting out in full at the time of our manifesto.  

But again, we need to do more.

A Liberal Democrat Government would conduct an urgent public spending review. Not Tory butchering behind closed doors.  

We will identify priorities and then debate them publicly.

It’s right and fair that the people who are going to be affected by these changes get to have their say.  That’s Democratic.  That’s open. That’s Liberal.  

Cynics say to me: how can you possibly talk about making economies when the voters want to be promised lots of freebies? 

But it is a massive mistake to underestimate the British people.

They don’t want to be insulted and patronised by politicians they don’t trust telling them that two plus two equals five, because five is a bigger number than four. Or that all of our problems will be solved by painless ‘cutting waste’.

Our programme is different not just because it is more transparent but because it offers two things our rivals can’t: hope and fairness.

The hope derives from a commitment to invest part of the savings more productively in sustainable forms of growth which creates jobs.

Without growth there is no new money to pay down government debt. But it must be sensible growth which doesn’t depend on consumer spending sprees, destroying the environment or the roller coaster of financial gambling.

We want a Green New Deal. Investing in jobs by improving our homes and building more social housing. And we will set up an infrastructure bank to invest in big projects like railways and renewable energy.

And fairness is crucial.

The public will accept austerity for a time if the burdens are fairly shared.

They will not accept it from a government that imposes hardship on the majority while rewarding rich cronies, grovelling to tax exiles and non-doms and ignoring the widening inequalities in income and wealth. 

So we will change our unfair tax system. 

3.6 million people who earn less than £10,000 will no longer pay any income tax at all.

Pensioners will be £100 better off and the average person’s income tax bill cut by £700.

We will pay for the tax cut by blocking tax loopholes that favour the wealthy and taxing their wealth in their mansions worth over £2 million: in other words the people who profited from the boom.

People are desperate to see the back of this Labour government. But they don’t want the same old Tories. And make no mistake they are exactly the same.

There is an alternative.

In just over 50 days there will be a general election.

We know that people want to vote for a party that will radically change our economy, for the better in a financially responsible way.

Our job is to show them we are that party. 

Our job is to make sure that on May 6th they vote Liberal Democrat.

I know we can.  With Nick’s leadership, with your help and work – and your passion and your belief – we will.

Liberal Democrat Spring Conference today backed radical plans to change the education system to give children a fair start in life.

The proposals include:

• An extra £2.5bn investment in schools to reduce class sizes, improve discipline and provide more one-to-one tuition to help struggling pupils, paid as a pupil premium to schools for each of the poorest 1m children they teach
• The scrapping of tuition fees for first undergraduate degrees, whether studied full or part-time, over six years

Commenting, Liberal Democrat Shadow Children, Schools and Families Secretary, David Laws said:

“It is a disgrace that where children are born and how much their parents earn can still dictate how well they do at school.

“Schools should be a level playing field, opening up opportunities and making sure that all children have a fair chance to achieve their potential.

“Our plans to invest an extra £2.5bn in schools will enable headteachers to cut class sizes and provide children who are struggling with the support they need.  We will set schools free from constant Government interference so they can focus on getting the best from all children.

“I am proud that the Liberal Democrats have made such a clear and bold commitment to give every child a fair start in life.”

Liberal Democrat Spring Conference today pledged its commitment to ending child detention in immigration centres.

Commenting, Liberal Democrat Shadow Home Secretary, Chris Huhne said:

“It is a moral stain on this country’s proud reputation in accepting refugees that we are routinely locking up children for months at a time even though they have committed no crime.

“Locking children up in this way can do them serious physical and psychological harm. This is the behaviour of the Victorian workhouses, not 21st century Britain.

“The Government must find its long lost moral compass and put an end to child detention immediately.”

Nick Clegg’s Chief of Staff, Danny Alexander today gave a speech to Spring Conference setting out the main themes of the Liberal Democrat General Election campaign.

The full text of the speech is below:
 
Conference – I have been working on this manifesto for nearly a year now. Since then, my wife has become pregnant with our second child.
 
I wouldn’t draw this comparison with her, but I can tell you that working on a manifesto has some similarities: my hopes, my ambitions for how things will change once it comes out. The sleepless nights.
 
But with the due date for our baby at the end of May, I hope to get the manifesto out before then!
 
This election is a huge opportunity for the Liberal Democrats.

Your hard work, your dedication to our Party and your ceaseless activity to get the Lib Dem word out, means we are poised to make gains across the land. I hope our hard work on the manifesto will help you to close the deal.

Two ideas will dominate this election campaign: change and fairness. Only one party is arguing at this election for both fairness and change: the Liberal Democrats.

Change: because business as usual is not the answer to the economic, political, and environmental crises that we face.
 
Fairness: because too many people in our society are still held back because of the circumstances of their birth, their sex or their parent’s bank balance.
 
The dreadful crises we have faced give us the chance to reshape our country.
 
We believe that change must be built around that one simple, powerful, and very British value: fairness.
 
Unlike Gordon Brown – and despite my red hair – I am not known for my bad language. But fairness is not the only ‘F word’ I am going to use today.

It sometimes helps to be able to sum up the other parties in a single word, so let me do it for you.

What is the “F” word for Labour: I say it is F for failed.
 
And what is the “F” word for the Conservatives: I say it is F for fake.

Failed ……. Fake ……. Nothing could contrast more with what we want for the future

The core of the Liberal Democrat manifesto will be short, direct and to the point.

We have stripped away everything that is not essential because the country cannot afford it.

And we have set out in detail – more directly than any other party – how we will tackle the crisis in our nation’s finances.

We won’t make a single promise to the British people without saying exactly how we will pay for it.

We have taken some difficult decisions. I know it is not easy to put on hold some long-standing party commitments that we won’t be able to deliver in the next Parliament.

But it is the right thing to do – because we will not make promises we can’t keep.

But what we can promise is four big steps to a fairer Britain.

Only four.

But four big changes – more significant than anything Labour or the Tories will offer - to reshape the country we live in.

Fair taxes.
 
A new, fair start for all children at school.
 
A rebalanced, green economy.
 
And clean, open politics.

These four pledges are the main subjects of our debates this weekend so let me say something about each.

Fair taxes first. Thanks to Labour and the Tories, the poorest people lose more of their income in tax than the richest. That’s not fairness.

A banker pays only a fifth of his capital gains in tax, while the person who cleans his office gives a third of their meagre wage to the taxman. That’s not fairness.

Our plan is simple: we will make the first £10,000 you earn tax free.

I believe this is the single most radical, distinctive, and fair policy on offer from any party at this election.

That will put £700 into the pockets of almost every working person. £1400 for the average family with two earners.
 
Real money back in the pockets of people who are struggling to make ends meet.

Over 3 million more of the lowest paid people will pay no income tax at all. That’s fairness.

Every week in the Highlands, I meet families who are facing real financial difficulties. Income falling, bills to pay, children to feed and clothe.

They see all the money going to the banks, hear all the talk of cuts, and ask ‘who is standing up for me?’

The answer is the Liberal Democrats.

We’ll pay for it by closing loopholes exploited by the wealthy.

Yes, Lord Ashcroft, that does mean you as well. It’s time to stop thinking you can pass laws, buy seats, but not pay our taxes.

I’m not saying that Lord Ashcroft uses his money to buy influence – but he has had Christmas Number 1 in Belize for the last 15 years in a row.

We will tax capital gains the same as income. End higher rate relief on pension contributions. A new mansion tax paid on the value of homes over £2 million, and fair taxes on polluting air travel.

It is only the Liberal Democrats who are brave enough to tell some of the wealthiest people in the land that – at a time when millions of families are struggling to get by - they will have to pay more.

The first £10,000 you earn, tax free. That’s fairness.

Second, a fair chance for all children.

Under Labour and the Tories in the UK, a child’s chances in life are more closely linked to their parent’s income than anywhere else in Europe. That’s not fairness.

Our plan will give every child the individual attention they need to reach their full potential.

We will cut class sizes to help every child do better.

We are the only party that will spend more on schools - targeted at the children who need the most help.

Head-teachers will be freed to spend that money on what they think will make the most difference. Whether it is smaller classes, more one-to-one tuition, or after school classes.

Even in the depths of the recession, we will find new money for education – by scaling back tax credits to better off families – because it is so important to the future of our country.

Third, a new, rebalanced economy.

Labour and the Tories have been so in thrall to the City, they ignored the rest of the economy and caused the longest recession on record. That’s not fairness.

The Liberal Democrats, with Vince Cable as chancellor, will break up the banks so that they can never again wreck the economy. And until the break up is complete, our new banking levy is the only credible proposal in British politics to make them pay for the guarantee we give them.

We will build a balanced, sustainable economy – growth that lasts. In our first year in government, we will invest to create new jobs and boost the recovery.

And crucially, that investment will be green.

Labour and Conservatives ignored the environment and pushed nuclear energy, dirty coal, airport expansion. That’s not fairness for future generations.

By investing in new, low carbon industries we can keep people in work while we protect our planet too.

And, of course, we will repair the nation’s finances. This year, government is spending £178 billion more than it raises in tax. Even when the recovery gets fully underway, that gap is predicted to be £78 billion.

If we don’t close that gap over the next few years, our economy will be ruined. We will set out – in detail – our plans to guarantee that won’t happen.

Our measures include: the banking levy, scrapping the child trust fund, no like-for-like replacement of Trident, capping public sector pay rises, scrapping ID cards and biometric passports.

I could go on – but I am sure Vince has much more to say on this later.

But I will add that it says something when the Financial Times thinks you’re the most credible party on reducing the deficit.

The Liberal Democrats have the best plan for fixing the economy. We are the best guarantee this country has of future financial stability.

Fourth, clean and decent politics.

Under Labour and the Tories, the broken political system has given government’s total power with a small minority of votes. That’s not fairness.

They have conspired to create a corrupt system of expenses, and then allow those who break the rules to hang on in office. That’s not fairness.

They have hovered up power from communities and councils to the centre. That’s not fairness.

Our plan will put power back where it belongs: with the people.
 
A fair voting system to end safe seats and ensure representative government;
 
Giving people the power to sack their MPs if they break the rules;
 
Power taken from Westminster and given to communities;
 
An end to big money in politics. 

Reforming politics is essential to make the country fairer.

On top of these steps, our manifesto will also set out how a Liberal Democrat government will:

Protect the NHS frontline, using the health savings we find to safeguard services.
Immediately restore the link between pensions and earnings, so pensioners don’t fall further behind when growth returns.
Use the amount of money we would save by scrapping ID cards to put 3000 more police on the beat.
Cut desk jobs at the MOD so we can pay our brave service men and women a decent living wage.
 
Conference, I have known Nick Clegg for 15 years and have worked with him closely since he became our leader – as his chief of staff and on this manifesto.

I can tell you that of the three party leaders, he is the best qualified of them all to be Prime Minister. He is plain-speaking, tells it as he sees it, and most importantly his politics is motivated by his deeply held belief that this country needs to be fairer. His leadership is what our country needs.

He has been clear from the start that these difficult times mean we must be clear about our priorities:

Fair taxes.
 
A fair start for all children.
 
A rebalanced, green economy.
 
And clean, open politics.
 
I want to be clear about one thing: those four steps are a unified package. They must be implemented together if we are to get the fairness we want in Britain. All for one, and one for all.

The more Liberal Democrat votes, the more Liberal Democrat MPs, the more power we will have to deliver our package for a fairer Britain.

The next election isn’t between Brown and Cameron, much though they would both like to pretend that it is.
 
It’s between the old way of doing politics and the real change represented by Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrats.

I know we are ready to lead this country. In fact, I believe we are the only party with a clear plan that can lead the country out of the mess we are in.
 
If you want change, vote for the only Party that will bring about change. Change that works for you – vote for the Liberal Democrats.

On Saturday 13 March, Liberal Democrat Deputy Leader and Shadow Chancellor, Vince Cable will address delegates at the Liberal Democrat Spring Conference – the last conference before the General Election.

In his speech, Vince Cable will say that the Liberal Democrats are the party of fiscal responsibility and fairer taxes.
 
Extracts from the speech are below:
 
I have a very simple message.
We, the Liberal Democrats, were right about the financial crisis.
We warned of the dangers and we led the debate when the crisis came.
And now we have a clear vision for the future of the British economy.
 
What the public wants to know is who can guide the country out of the present morass: the broken, discredited, banking system; the deepest and longest post war recession, whose effects are far from over; and levels of government borrowing which are not sustainable. We can.
 
The banking collapse and recession have dug a deep hole in the Government’s finances. The next government will have to deal every single day with the consequences. The growing worry about sovereign debt means that there is no hiding place. Nor should there be. It grates to have the economy held to ransom by currency speculators and the clowns in the rating agencies who missed the Icelandic crash and so badly misjudged the safety of banks. But any Government, of any hue, will have to depend on the markets to finance its deficit.
 
We must and will be fiscally responsible. 
 
Unlike the Tories and their cronies who want to create a financial panic and run on sterling to frighten people into voting for them on May 6th.  Playing fast and loose with the financial stability of this country for political gain – destabilising the markets – is dangerous, irresponsible and wrong. 
 
Fairness is crucial.
The public will accept austerity for a time if the burdens are fairly shared. They will not accept it from a Government that imposes hardship on the majority while rewarding rich cronies, grovelling to tax exiles and non-doms and ignoring the widening inequalities in income and wealth.  So we will change our unfair tax system. 
 
3.6 million people who earn less than £10,000 will no longer pay any income tax at all. Pensioners will be £100 better off and the average person’s income tax bill cut by £700. We will pay for the tax cut by blocking tax loopholes that favour the wealthy and taxing their wealth in their mansions worth over £2 million: in other words the people who profited from the boom on our Fantasy Island will pay their fair share.
 
People are desperate to see the back of this Labour government. But they don’t want the same old Tories.
 
There is an alternative.
 
In just over 50 days there will be a general election. We know that people want to vote for a party that will radically change our economy in a financially responsible way. And that will change our society and our politics for the better.  Our job is to show them we are that party.  Our job is to make sure that on May 6th they vote Liberal Democrat. I know we can.  With your help and work – and your passion and belief – we will.

Liberal Democrat Leader Nick Clegg will tonight deliver a rally speech to the Liberal Democrat Spring Conference.

Extracts from the speech are below:
 
This election is still wide open.
The people out there still haven’t made up their minds.
All bets are off.
 
This Government knows it’s come to the end of the road.
The Tories know people have started to see through them.
And voters know the Liberal Democrats offer something different.
They’ve seen us calling it right, taking a stand, putting principles back into politics…
And they believe us when we say:
Don’t waste this election.
Even if you feel hopeless after everything the other parties have put you through.
Don’t give up on change.
And don’t accept anything less than change that works for you.
 
But don’t think it’s going to be easy.
It’s going to be tough.
Tougher than anything we’ve ever done, because the closer we get the harder our opponents will fight to keep us down.
 
They’ll get nasty; they’ll get personal…
But when it’s really tough, thank your lucky stars you’re not a Labour activist… Desperately trying to keep a brave face on even though defeat is just round the corner.
 
Thank your lucky stars you’re not a Tory activist…
Certain for so long that victory would fall into your lap, only to discover now that the country’s not convinced.
 
But on Monday morning I want you to get out there and go for broke in what will be the biggest fight of our political lives.

The former leader of the Conservative MEPs who stood against Tory-backed Michal Kaminski has announced his defection to the Liberal Democrats at the Party’s Spring Conference in Birmingham.

Edward McMillan-Scott, the Conservative’s most senior MEP, has joined the Liberal Democrats.

The former leader of the Conservative MEPs who stood against Tory-backed Michal Kaminski has announced his defection to the Liberal Democrats at the Party’s Spring Conference in Birmingham.

Edward McMillan-Scott, the Vice-President of the European Parliament with responsibility for human rights and democracy, was welcomed to the Liberal Democrats by Leader Nick Clegg.

Edward McMillan-Scott, MEP for Yorkshire and North Lincolnshire said: “I have been around the higher circles of the Conservative Party for long enough to fear that on Europe Cameron says one thing in opposition and will do another in Government.

“I have long fought against totalitarianism and the extremism and religious persecution it brings. It was wrong of Cameron to associate with MEPs who have extremist pasts in his new European alliance.

“My reasons for joining the Liberal Democrats are that in Nick Clegg they have a leader whom I like, admire and respect. They are internationalists, not nationalists. They are committed to politics based the values of fairness and change.

“From being a liberal Conservative I become a conservative Liberal. Most of my family are liberals: I am pleased to join the Liberal family.”
 
Liberal Democrat Leader Nick Clegg said:

“I am delighted to welcome Edward McMillan-Scott to the Liberal Democrats.
 
“For many years he has fought for human rights and democracy world wide and he is rightly a respected politician across Europe.
 
“As someone of principle he has refused to cosy up to right wing extremists, despite pressure from the Tory machine.
 
“This flies in the face of David Cameron’s claims of change. It shows that people of principle, who believe in fairness and want real change for Britain are at home in the Liberal Democrats.”

The Liberal Democrats today launched their slogan for the General Election campaign: ‘Change That Works For You. Building A Fairer Britain’.

The slogan is being used at the party’s Spring Conference in Birmingham this weekend.

Commenting, Nick Clegg’s Chief of Staff, Danny Alexander said:

“This election will be about fairness and change and the Liberal Democrats are the only party that will deliver both.
 
“The Labour Party has let people down, they failed to make Britain fair, failed on the economy, failed to protect our environment and they failed to clean up politics.

 
“Everybody knows that the Conservatives will only make things better for those at the top.
 
“The Liberal Democrats are different because we are the only party that will deliver a fairer Britain and bring change that works for you.”

Spring Conference 2010: Birmingham

For the first time, Birmingham will be playing host to the Liberal Democrats’ spring conference. Whether you are attending or not, we want you to be able to be part of it. All the latest speeches and motions, videos and photos will be available online. Read more >

On Saturday Nick will be holding an online Q & A for all those not attending conference.
Find out more >

Liberal Democrat Shadow Energy and Climate Change Secretary, Simon Hughes today called on the Government to hold a public inquiry into the ‘Justification’ for new nuclear power stations.

Commenting, Simon Hughes said:

“It would be completely unacceptable for the Government to rush through new nuclear in its last days in office without a public inquiry.
 
“New reactors still haven’t been approved and no-one knows how we’re going to deal with the deadly waste.
 
“Ed Miliband has made himself judge and jury having already expressed a clear view on new nuclear.
 
“The Liberal Democrats are strongly opposed to a new generation of nuclear power. We must have an immediate full and transparent public inquiry before any decision is made.”

BBC News Channel: Thursday, 11 March 2010

Plans for a new high-speed rail network, featuring 250mph trains, have been announced by Transport Secretary Lord Adonis.

A White Paper is recommending a route for a new line between London and Birmingham with a future extension to northern England and Scotland. The public will be consulted on the proposed route, with work unlikely to start until 2017 at the earliest. Network Rail said high-speed rail “can drive economic growth and boost jobs”. Lord Adonis told the House of Lords that “extensive and detailed” consultation would be needed on the project, particularly with any communities which might be affected.

Like many people, we’re yet to be convinced that the overall business case for HS2 - the high-speed line - stacks up environmentally, financially and socially Patrick Begg, National Trust

“Subject to this consultation, the London terminus for the high-speed line would be Euston, the Birmingham city centre station would be at Curzon Street, and there would be interchange stations with Crossrail west of Paddington and near Birmingham airport.” Lord Adonis said the project would create 10,000 jobs and yield £2 in benefits for every £1 spent. He said the first 120 miles between London and the West Midlands would cost between £15.8bn and £17.4bn. The cost per mile beyond Birmingham is then estimated to halve, taking the overall cost of the 335 mile Y-shaped network to about £30bn. The main opposition parties are also committed, in principle, to the need for a high-speed rail network. However, reaching the necessary political consensus for a particular route may prove to be difficult ahead of the general election. Scotland’s Transport Minister Stewart Stevenson said developing high speed rail to Scotland “is central to the economic case for high-speed rail in the UK”. Network Rail chief executive Iain Coucher said high-speed rail was “a vital part of a modern, dynamic economy”.

He also said that it would “take cars and lorries off the road, cut domestic flights and release capacity on the existing rail network, transforming services even for those communities not served directly by a high-speed line. “It is the low-carbon, sustainable transport of the future.” Michael Roberts, chief executive of the Association of Train Operating Companies (Atoc), said: “The commitment that all three parties have shown to HSR [high-speed rail] is a vote of confidence in the industry, and will help place train travel at the heart of a successful low-carbon economy. Public consultation “The plans must be affordable at a time of real constraint in the public finances and must show how HSR will be paid for while continuing to invest in the existing network on which passengers make more than a billion journeys a year.” For the past year, the government-backed company High Speed Two has been working on plans to develop a new high-speed rail network, initially between London and Birmingham. The new line could cut the journey time between the cities to just 46 minutes. Bob Crow, general secretary of the RMT union, said: “We welcome any move to expand the rail network and to bring more passengers on to the trains. “However, development of HSR in the UK has been left in the slow lane because of our fragmented, privatised system which puts short-term profits first and long-term, strategic planning a very poor second.” Environmental impact Patrick Begg, director for the National Trust’s Thames and Solent region, said the proposed route could cause “serious and significant impacts on the landscape” of the Chilterns. He added: “We’re taking a keen interest in how these impacts have been considered and assessed, particularly exploring the government’s proposals for mitigating against these impacts through design and tunnelling. “Like many people, we’re yet to be convinced that the overall business case for HS2 - the high-speed line - stacks up environmentally, financially and socially.”

FROM THE TODAY PROGRAMME More from Today programme

Geraldine Nicholson, the chairwoman of No Third Runway Action Group (NoTRAG), which is opposed to Heathrow Airport expansion, said: “If the government thought it was going to get plaudits from us for its plans, it is sorely mistaken. “What we want to see is an HSR scheme that goes all the way to Scotland, a scheme that is designed to make it easy for people to use the train instead of the plane. “We will oppose any scheme that does not involve the dropping of the third runway.” Anthony Smith, Passenger Focus chief executive, said he welcomed “the commitment that the new line will be an addition to the current network - not a bolt-on rich man’s railway”. He added: “The ability to turn up and travel remains a key attraction of Britain’s railway. This new line, with fast frequent services could, with attractive fares, start to revolutionise intercity rail travel.” http://bit.ly/dgE009

Walsall MBC : 08 March 2010 

A small display at Walsall Museum during March and April 2010 celebrates the achievements of Walsall’s Karting Champion, Roy Johnson.

Fourteen year old Roy, who comes from Pelsall and attends Great Wyrley School, is thought of as one of Britain’s most promising karting talents.  He began karting at the age of four years old and has been competing in karting competitions since 2004.  In 2008 Roy became the British Cadet Kart Champion, and his achievements have been compared to those of Lewis Hamilton at a similar age…. http://bit.ly/aWrvPI

Liberal Democrat Spokeswoman for Youth and Equality, Lynne Featherstone today launched the party’s ‘Free to be Young’ policy paper.

Launching the paper at The Salmon Youth Centre in Bermondsey, the policy outlined how the Liberal Democrats will ensure that all young people have better access to after-school facilities, comprehensive support and training for those entering the workplace and legislation in place to stamp out homophobic bullying.

The paper includes proposals to:

• Introduce a new ‘Paid Internship’ scheme allowing 800,000 young people to receive a ‘Training Allowance’ of £55 a week for up to 3 months
• Support schools, colleges and apprenticeship schemes to promote opportunities for disabled children and young people
• Immediately remove young people under 16 from the National DNA Database unless they have committed a sexual or violent offence
• Ensure that all schools include ways to tackle homophobic bullying and at least one teacher in every school has sufficient training to do so
• Cut back on bureaucracy and red tape so youth organisations are free to be creative and flexible

Commenting, Lynne Featherstone said:

“It is clear that Labour will continue to fail our young people and the Conservatives will ignore them completely.

“While youth organisations are left to do their vital work on a shoestring, greedy bankers are bailed out by the taxpayer and flaunt their bonuses while we watch every penny.

“Our young people will inherit an economy where it is tougher then ever to enter the work place.

“It is high time that realistic measures are put in place to support the future workforce from mass unemployment and crippling debt.

“Only the Liberal Democrats will give young people and those who work with them the chance for a real future.”

In a speech to Chatham House, Liberal Democrat Leader Nick Clegg set out what is at stake in foreign policy at the coming General Election.

Nick Clegg said:
 
“Gordon Brown and David Cameron want to pretend that foreign policy is not an issue at the General Election. Gordon Brown doesn’t want to remind voters of the disastrous decision to go to war in Iraq. David Cameron doesn’t want to remind voters that he is friendless in Europe.
 
“The real truth is that the future of British foreign policy is as much in the balance as the future of our economy, or the future of our political system.
 
“This election is an opportunity to turn the page on the Labour-Conservative consensus on foreign policy which has been in place since the Suez crisis: one of following what the White House wants rather than leadership in Europe and the world.
 
“Of course our relationship with the US is of immense importance, but that should not mean that Britain unquestionably does what America wants when it is not in our interests to do so. On Iraq, on Russia, on the Middle East, on the interrogation of torture suspects and many other issues our strategic interests have differed.
 
“Baroness Manningham-Buller’s admission that the US kept our security forces in the dark about unacceptable interrogation techniques only confirms the impression of an unbalanced and unequal relationship.
 
“That is why, in the same way we must rebalance an economy that is over-reliant on bankers, we must rebalance foreign policy that is over-reliant on the White House. It is time to repatriate British foreign policy by standing tall in our European backyard and pursuing a policy of partnership – not followership – with our friends in the US.
 
“At this General Election only the Liberal Democrats realise what is at stake and are prepared to spell out what a different foreign policy would look like.”

“It’s very difficult to see how the man who claimed to have abolished boom and bust can campaign on his stewardship of the economy after the greatest bust for decades.

Responding to the Prime Minister’s economic speech this morning and the announcement of the Budget date, Liberal Democrat Shadow Chancellor, Vince Cable said:

“Gordon Brown’s speech shows he is leading with a weak hand.

“It’s very difficult to see how the man who claimed to have abolished boom and bust can campaign on his stewardship of the economy after the greatest bust for decades.

“The only reason he is, of course, is because the Conservatives are even worse. The only consistent thing about their economic policy is that they have been consistently wrong.

“The Budget must clearly spell out where Labour intend to make spending cuts in order to tackle the budget deficit.  All we have seen from the Prime Minister today is more waffle.

“Gordon Brown admits that there are bumps in the road ahead.  The public know that and expect all parties to follow the Liberal Democrat lead and tell them where the bumps are and how we will be navigating our way over and around them.”

“Liberal Democrats want to put an end to the political bickering. We are willing to work with the other parties to solve this problem once and for all,” said the Liberal Democrat Shadow Health Secretary.

Commenting following today’s cross party Age UK, at which the health spokespeople of the three main parties met to discuss the reform of social care, Norman Lamb said:
 
“It’s clear from today’s social care summit that voters want politicians to come together and solve one of the biggest social challenges facing our country.
 
“We need long-term solutions to this problem so that older people are treated with the respect they deserve. We cannot continue with the current system where people have to sell their homes to pay for care and the quality of care on offer is not up to scratch.
 
“There was broad agreement that solving the crisis in social care is going to require a partnership between the state and individuals and if the other parties are willing then there is no reason why the current differences in opinion should be insurmountable.
 
“Liberal Democrats want to put an end to the political bickering. We are willing to work with the other parties to solve this problem once and for all. There should be no preconditions and we are open to all ideas that seek a solution that will be fair, affordable and sustainable.
 
“Rather than shouting at each other let’s have a commitment from all three parties to start finding a solution now.”

“If civil servants don’t talk like the rest of the people in this country, then they are in danger of having a ‘goldfish bowl facilitated conversation’ that no one much cares about,” said the Liberal Democrat Shadow Communities and Local Government Secretary.

Commenting on the LGA’s annual list of words that public sector workers shouldn’t use, Julia Goldsworthy said:
 
“It is essential that the public knows what officials are up to and it’s not enough just to publish what councils spend on the web.
 
“The decision-making process needs to be easy to understand, instead of hidden behind baffling ‘Labour speak’.
 
“If civil servants don’t talk like the rest of the people in this country, then they are in danger of having a ‘goldfish bowl facilitated conversation’ that no one much cares about.”

“We need more well-led and properly funded schools if we are to address the disadvantages faced by so many young people in Britain,” said the Liberal Democrat Shadow Schools Secretary.

Commenting on today’s Ofsted figures, which show that half the schools they inspected last term were considered to be no better than ‘satisfactory’, David Laws said:

“Labour has had 13 years to get a grip on education, but thousands of children still attend schools which are not considered to be providing good standards.
 
“In spite of the controversy about whether these figures can be compared with earlier years, the bottom line is that half of schools inspected were not good enough.
 
“We need more well-led and properly funded schools if we are to address the disadvantages faced by so many young people in Britain.”

Local Euro MP Liz Lynne has welcomed today’s European Parliament vote for a plan to exempt struggling very small businesses from the need to produce annual accounts.

The proposal backed by MEPs in Strasbourg would dramatically reduce the bureaucratic burden on small businesses which can qualify as ‘micro-entities’ to enhance their competitiveness in the wake of the financial crisis…. http://bit.ly/dD3pkw

Adam Lumley The YamYam 9 Mar 10
Following the decision by councillors Bill Madely and Graham Wilkes not to stand in the 2012 local elections, another Labour councillor has announced her intention not to contest the 2010 election in May… http://bit.ly/c3FQKl

The YamYam 10 Mar 10
After failing to account for at least £1million in European Union grants, Walsall Council finds itself the subject of an independent inquiry. External auditors Grant Thornton are investigating how cash dished out to local groups remains unaccounted for… http://bit.ly/aGQ5wZ

Liberal Democrat Shadow Northern Ireland Secretary, Alistair Carmichael has called on David Cameron to clarify the position of his Tory/UUP alliance on the devolution of policing and justice powers.

Commenting after a vote at the Northern Ireland Assembly, Alistair Carmichael said:

“It’s time for David Cameron to come clean about the position of his new alliance on policing and justice.

“With the UUP saying one thing, and the Tories saying the complete opposite, voters will struggle to understand what exactly joint Tory/UUP candidates stand for.

“What we’re seeing is the Tories in complete disarray. When it takes George Bush to step in as the voice of reason, it’s clear that David Cameron has dug himself a very big hole.

“This raises serious questions about David Cameron’s judgement. If he can’t manage to steer a straight course in opposition, how on earth would he cope as Prime Minister?”

Liberal Democrat peer Dick Taverne has written to the Sub-Committee on Lords’ Interests to ask for an investigation into whether Lord Ashcroft’s behaviour has breached the House of Lords Code of Conduct and principles of standards in public life.

The Honours Scrutiny Committee withdrew its objections to Lord Ashcroft becoming a peer on the basis of his clear undertaking that he would “take up permanent residence in the United Kingdom again before the end of the calendar year”.
 
Commenting, Lord Taverne said:
 
“If Lord Ashcroft’s undertaking was broken, or significantly changed without the House of Lords being informed, that would be a serious breach of the Code of Conduct.
 
“Lord Ashcroft does not appear to have been straight with the Lords. This directly contravenes the principles of standards in public life and therefore raises the question of his suitability for public office.
 
“Transparency and honour are vital to maintain the standing and good name of the House of Lords. The opaque and secretive nature of Lord Ashcroft’s behaviour risks bringing the House of Lords into disrepute.”

“These are deeply alarming figures which suggest that British exporters simply haven’t been able to take advantage of the big devaluation which occurred in the last year,” said the Liberal Democrat Shadow Chancellor.

Commenting on the news that UK exports took their biggest plunge in more than three years during January, Vince Cable said:

“These are deeply alarming figures which suggest that British exporters simply haven’t been able to take advantage of the big devaluation which occurred in the last year.

“They suggest that the long term decline and neglect of British manufacturing has taken its toll and that an awful lot more needs to be done to rebalance the economy to make it more competitive.
 
“It is wrong to suggest that the British economy can escape from this recession by just relying on exports. It just isn’t happening.

“Exports are one modest part of the national economy. We need an economy that is strong and secure across the board – and the Liberal Democrats are committed to delivering that.”

“Only the Liberal Democrats can be trusted to follow the evidence of what works to cut crime,” said the Liberal Democrat Shadow Home Secretary.

Commenting on the spat over crime figures between Chris Grayling and Alan Johnson, Chris Huhne said:
 
“The Conservatives are wrong to say that crime is rising, and Labour is wrong to claim the credit as crime is falling in every western European country except Belgium. Technology and demographics are doing the work.
 
“On crime, Labour and the Tories try to make up the figures as they go along. Only the Liberal Democrats can be trusted to follow the evidence of what works to cut crime.”

“Only the Liberal Democrats have produced a credible and coherent plan for dealing with the deficit,” said the Liberal Democrat Shadow Chancellor.

Commenting on the BCC’s downgrading of its expectations for economic growth this year, Vince Cable said:

“The BCC are spot on.

“The British economy is still weak and cutting spending too soon risks stifling growth and recovery.

“The Liberal Democrats have made it clear that the point at which we cut spending will be based on economics and not political dogma.

“While Labour buries its head in the sand and the Tories mire themselves in confusion, only the Liberal Democrats have produced a credible and coherent plan for dealing with the deficit.

“The BCC are also right to highlight the key role that sound and solvent small and medium sized businesses have to play in our economic recovery. 

“Unfortunately, many of these businesses are being starved of the capital they need. The nationalised and semi nationalised banks must work in the national interest and get credit flowing to these businesses so that they can survive and expand.  This will protect jobs and ensure that growth isn’t damaged.”

Serious concerns have been raised about Conservative plans for an £8,000 payment for residential care after figures released today by the Liberal Democrats have revealed that 3.5m pensioner households (66%) do not have assets of £8,000 excluding their homes.

The figures, released ahead of tomorrow’s cross-party social care conference, undermine Conservative claims that their plans would enable older people to pass their homes on to their children as two thirds of pensioner households would have to sell or release equity from their homes to pay for the private insurance scheme.

The figures reveal that:

• 63% of pensioner couple households (1.4m) do not have non-housing assets of £16,000 (cost of insurance to cover both pensioners)
• 71% of single female pensioner households (1.6m) do not have non-housing assets of £8,000
• 64% of single male pensioner households (600,000) do not have non-housing assets of £8,000

Commenting, Liberal Democrat Shadow Health Secretary, Norman Lamb said:
 
“The reality is that Conservative social care plans are unworkable, unfair and unaffordable for the majority of pensioners in this country and do nothing to pay for the costs of care at home. 

“This is basically a ‘poll tax’ and many people on modest means will be wondering how the Tories could think it’s fair that they should pay the same amount for care as multi-millionaires.

“David Cameron needs to start being honest with older voters. Most couples don’t have a spare £16,000 to cover an insurance premium and it’s incredibly dishonest to say this will stop people from having to sell their homes to pay for care. 

“The Tories need to explain how they’re going to get the numbers to add up on this plan especially as the private insurance market has failed to get people interested. Perhaps this is yet another example where the Tories need a little help when it comes to using a calculator.

“Whoever wins the next election cannot avoid the fact that we’re facing a crisis in funding for care. What we need is a long-term solution which is both fair and affordable in the long-term.”

The Liberal Democrats today called for the Sex Offenders’ Register to be upgraded to take account of the use of the internet in the light of the tragic murder of Ashleigh Hall.

In a letter to the Home Secretary, Liberal Democrat Shadow Home Secretary Chris Huhne called for both the failures of conventional monitoring and the inadequacy of internet monitoring to be put right.

Commenting, Chris Huhne said:

“Our procedures are still lagging behind the development of the internet, since we do not even require the registration of IP and email addresses of sex offenders, which has now become typical in the United States. This would allow police to monitor social networking activity.
 
“It is also disappointing that Facebook, which was used by Peter Chapman to make contact with Ashleigh Hall, is the only big social networking site not to install the button that allows users to get advice on, and to report, suspicious on-line activity from so-called friends.

“If Bebo and MSN can install the button from the Child Exploitation and On-line Protection Centre, then so can Facebook.
 
“Until Facebook acts on this, its protestations that it cares passionately about the safety of people who use its site will look like empty words. Facebook urgently needs to take this clear, simple and practical step.”

Euro MP Liz Lynne has hailed a decision by EU ministers in Brussels today to adopt new laws to tackle the serious risks faced by nurses and other workers from needlestick injuries at work.

Nursing organisations and campaigners estimate that every year, across the EU, up to one million preventable injuries are sustained from needle sticks and sharp objects in hospitals and surgeries. For the UK alone, the estimate is 100,000 annual incidents.

These injuries can transmit blood borne infections such as Hepatitis C and HIV. ……… http://bit.ly/be0z9O

  Picture Courtesy BBC News 9 Mar 10

Controversy continues to dog the M6 Active Traffic Management Project between J10 and 10a. The latest issue is the massive size of the new signs which the Highways Agency has begun to erect on top of the new gantrey in the Murdoch Way area to the North of J10 at Walsall.

Councillors in the Willenhall area have requested and got a meeting with the Highways Agency to discuss the gantry which has been erected to the rear of flats in Southey Close, Short Heath reports Liberal Democrat councillor Ian Shires.

Fellow ward councillor Val Woodruff said “Residents are very concerned at what they have seen at Murdoch Way. The motorway there runs through a cutting so is out of view of nearby homes. The new gantry behind Southey Close runs on an embankment so the impact of these massive signs will be right in their faces.”

Councillor Pete Hughes the third member of Willenhall North Lib Dem Focus Team made the point that when Walsall Football Club requested planning permission for their large advertising hoarding the Highways Agency soon put an objection in saying that it would distract motorists. “Talk about double standards” said Pete.

“A meeting has been arranged with the Highways Agency on Friday to thrash out concerns about the Southey Close gantry along with other outstanding issues affecting residents in the New Invention and Short Heath areas of Willenhall” concluded councillor Ian Shires. 

If you’ve ever asked the question as to why people of all ages endulge in anti social behaviour look no further than the actions of the contractors who carry out work for the likes of public utilities, the Highways Agency and the Council for the answer.

Yesterday was a good example of what I call “corporate anti social behaviour”.  Around midday I got a phone call at work from a distraught member of New Invention Community Forum. Did I know that contractors working for BT had driven their vehicles onto the green by the motorway bridge on the Lichfield Road and left deep ruts across the grass to where they’d parked, destroying crocuses which had been planted by the local community a couple of years ago to brighten the place up.

We ask people to take a pride in where they live, yet this sort of thing is allowed to go on day after day, is it any wonder people give up in despair?

This was not an isolated case. The other day, whilst driving to work, I stopped by the traffic lights at the junction of Longwood Road and Sutton Road. At long last Walsall’s Highways contractor had repaired a deep pothole at the junction. To do this, yes you’ve guessed it, they’d parked their vehicles on the wide grass verge. The evidence was there for all to see in the form of a set of deep ruts across the grass.

Then there is all the hassle recently experienced by residents living next to the M6 Traffic Management Project, where swathes of trees were removed by contractors working for the Highways Agency. The first residents knew of this was when they heard the sound of the chain saws ripping out trees which had helped to hide the M6 from view.

I could go on, but I think, or at least I hope, I have made my point. Attitude starts at the top. If you want to stop anti social behaviour, you have to lead by example, and quite frankly Walsall Council needs to start enforcing an attitude of respect!

“It is absolutely unacceptable that patient care is being compromised in this way,” said the Liberal Democrat Shadow Health Secretary.

Commenting on today’s Nursing Times survey which revealed nurses are being asked to treat patients in mop cupboards, Norman Lamb said:

“It is absolutely unacceptable that patient care is being compromised in this way.

“Labour’s failure to put patient care above its obsession with targets has meant that nurses are being forced to treat people in completely inappropriate places.

“Labour seems to have lost sight of the basic importance of dignity and care.

“A mop cupboard is no place to treat a patient.”

“The idea that the UK upheld international law by invading Iraq is pure Labour doublespeak,” said the Liberal Democrat Shadow Foreign Secretary.

Commenting on David Miliband’s appearance before the Chilcot Inquiry, Edward Davey said:

“David Miliband and Gordon Brown are on a PR offensive to rewrite the history of the Iraq War.
 
“The idea that the UK upheld international law by invading Iraq is pure Labour doublespeak.
 
“Iraq diminished our standing in the Middle East and the wider world and divided us from our natural allies.
 
“Nobody will listen to Labour when it comes to restoring Britain’s reputation abroad.”

“Labour’s cuts are already biting across the NHS and their failure to cut back on waste means that it is the most vulnerable who are losing out,” said the Liberal Democrat Shadow Health Secretary.

Commenting on the report by the Princess Royal Trust for Carers which reveals that only 23% of the money allocated to help carers was used in this way, Norman Lamb said:
 
“The Government has completely neglected the vital work that carers do and this report is further evidence of the scale of the problem.
 
“Labour’s cuts are already biting across the NHS and their failure to cut back on waste means that it is the most vulnerable who are losing out.
 
“This report highlights the need for a guarantee to respite care which only the Liberal Democrats are committed to.”

On Tuesday 9 March, Nick Clegg will join John Kampfner for the launch of CentreForum’s new publication ‘Lost labours: where now for the liberal Left’.

Nick Clegg will join John Kampfner for the launch of CentreForum’s new publication ‘Lost labours: where now for the liberal Left’. This is an open invitation event:
http://j.mp/dmdxjZ

The annual event, celebrated on 8 March acknowledges the achievements of women across the world while also focusing on the continued disadvantages millions of women still face.

“I am pleased to add my support to International Women’s Day. It is crucial that people are able to come together to celebrate the achievements of women around the world. However this is not a time to just be reflective but also a time to look forwards and work together to stamp out all signs of inequality that threatens to undermine our society.”

“As the first woman from the Turkish community to be elected as councillor, I am a strong supporter of International Women’s Day, and campaigner for more women in public life. We must join forces and speak out against the continuing evil of so-called ‘honour killings’, most recently the terrible death of a young Turkish woman, Tulay Goren. Woman across the world continue to suffer. We have a duty to be the voice and the change that will make a difference to their lives.”

“I’m delighted to support International Women’s Day because I think it’s important we remember the struggle of women both past and present to win the right to vote and to stand for election. As a new Mum running for Parliament I still get asked - Why isn’t your partner standing instead? How can you do it with a baby? You’re not going to breastfeed here are you?  We need to keep on working for equality so that little girls born today enjoy even greater opportunities and are supported in their dreams.”

“The fight for women’s equality is not finished. And as lucky as I am to work for a party where equality and fairness runs through our very bones, some women do not have the same luxury. As a second generation Ghanaian, I am aware of the shocking poverty women and girls in Africa face on a daily basis. Though I shake my head in despair and give a sum of money each month to a charity, the visceral pain some women still face shakes me to my very core. We must not forget and we must not get complacent. We still have a fight, so lets win it together.”

“Taking this day to pause and remember the struggles of women throughout history to seek equal opportunity remains as vital as it always has been. Clara Zetkin’s original ideals of pressing for female equality resound as true now as they did nearly one hundred years ago. International Women’s Day marks the triumphs of women and girls around the globe and on this day we stand together, looking forward, to improving education, increasing representation and eradicating inequality.”

“I support International Women’s Day because I feel that women are still the unsung hero’s of modern British society. While things have progressed since my mother’s generation - for example there are many more women in work - the pressure on women has also grown exponentially. Women can now be a mum, partner and career woman all at the same time but are often less paid. We should celebrate our achievements but realise there is still a long way to go before true equality. Just take Parliament as an example: 51% of the population represented by 20% of MPs! Shocking. Come on ladies, let’s make this election count!”

“I’m delighted to be one of millions of women celebrating International Women’s Day today. Across the world, women boast extraordinary achievements. Despite poverty, we raise families. Despite discrimination, we excel and prosper. Despite pressures to fulfil roles that are defined for us, we can be strong, confident and secure in ourselves. To all young girls, I say one thing - become the woman you want to be.”

“I’m supporting International Women’s Day because women are the answer to many of the world’s problems and investing in women’s education, empowerment, and entrepreneurship will change the world.”

“How wonderful to have a global day celebrating women, the roles we play in the home and our achievements in society.  May I wish all women the courage of their convictions, and the ability to greet each challenge with a smile!”

“I support International Women’s Day to recognise the role of women in society throughout the world and it is essential that their determination be celebrated across the world.”

Local LibDem Euro MP Liz Lynne has welcomed a ban on mobile phone users racking up huge Internet roaming charges while using their phones in another EU country.

The cut-off facility, which came into force on Monday 1st March, protects customers incurring more than a single charge of €50 while downloading data on their phones, unless the customer sets a higher limit themselves.

The move follows a long campaign for action by Lib Dem MEPs and consumer groups.

On some mobile phone service plans, Internet roaming charges while in another EU country are very high. One recent case saw a German man faced with a bill of €46,000 for downloading a TV programme onto his phone while he was in France. ……… Full story @ http://bit.ly/9sqz23

Speaking yesterday on Adam Boulton Live, Sky News, the Liberal Democrat Leader, Nick Clegg told the Sky News Political Editor that that the Tories were attempting “a form of blackmail” in order to win the general election.

Nick Clegg went onto say: “It’s a form of blackmail to talk down the economy the way they have done.

“David Cameron, George Osborne and Ken Clarke said last week: ‘Vote for us otherwise the markets will tear the economic stability of this country to bits.’

“The desperate and cynical Tories thought they were entitled to govern, but every time they come under pressure they start lashing out.”

“What the markets rightly demand is clarity, and the Conservatives aren’t giving it, about how you bring the structural deficit down.”

During the first of a series of interviews with the party leaders on Sunday Live, Nick Clegg said that voters were entitled to expect stability in the economy, no matter who wins the election.

He refused to say if he would take the Lib Dems into a formal coalition with either party.

“It’s right for people to expect that if there’s a stronger party, it has the moral right to seek to govern alone, or with others.”

“Speculation doesn’t get us anywhere.”

Nick Clegg also backed Gordon Brown’s decision to visit troops in Afghanistan, and said he was amazed by the Conservative criticisms.

“It is right that the prime minister should go and visit our troops in Afghanistan,” he said. “

(It is) almost a constitutional duty for the leader of this country to show our collective sense of gratitude to our brave soldier on the front line.”

Nick Clegg added that he would be interested to see whether David Cameron travels with a TV crew when he next visits Afghanistan.

This article was written by Nick Clegg and appeared in The Independent on SundayThe electorate is weary of two-party wrangling and tactical voting. It is ready for a third option, which breaks new ground

British politics could be at a major turning point. Take a look at some basic facts: in the 1951 general election, only 2 per cent of voters supported parties other than the Conservatives and Labour. At the local elections last year, that figure had shot up to 40 per cent. During the last two general elections, for the first time in post-war Britain, more people didn’t vote at all than voted for the winning party. Gordon Brown is Prime Minister even though only 22 per cent of eligible voters supported the Labour Party at the last election; at the same election, almost one in four of those people who voted – close to six million voters – supported the Liberal Democrats, yet only 10 per cent of MPs are Lib Dems.

I think these facts tell an important story: the old duopoly of British politics is dying on its feet, but our institutions still operate as if nothing has changed since the height of the Cold War. An increasing number of people are voting with their feet by voting for other parties, or not at all.

Politics is stuck in a no-man’s-land, caught between the reality of greater pluralism and the conservativism of duopoly politics. Millions of people no longer feel any allegiance to the red-blue blue-red politics of old, yet our electoral system and Parliament sustain the fiction that the two old parties still speak for Britain.

Not surprisingly, the Labour and Conservative parties seek to ignore all this. I see it every week at Prime Minister’s Questions – the braying, the hyperbolic claims and counter- claims, the lame jokes, each party gaining a few inches of advantage in a game of political attrition which leaves the rest of the country cold. Like vested interests in the commercial world, the old parties stitch up the rules to keep others out.

That is the unspoken story behind the expenses scandals. There are hundreds of Conservative and Labour MPs who have been given jobs for life in safe seats even though only a minority of their constituents support them. A third of seats in the House of Commons haven’t changed hands since the Second World War. Power without accountability, privilege without competition always leads to trouble. No wonder they abused the expenses system on an industrial scale – flipping from one taxpayer-funded home to the next for personal gain, avoiding paying capital gains tax.

This election could be an election of renewal, when the old politics finally passes its sell-by date and a new era of pluralism and accountability is ushered in. The one advantage of a crisis – economic, political, social – is that it can open the door to a new way of doing things. It can make the unthinkable thinkable, the idealistic realistic. It can be the beginning of something new. Yet what are the old battalions of the Conservative and Labour parties doing? Turning their fire on each other in a frenzy of mutual loathing.

The Conservative Party strategy is now clear: personal animus towards its opponents; shameless scaremongering in the financial markets; double standards in its own policies. David Cameron’s spring conference speech carried one message only: vote for me, because I really really hate the other guy. George Osborne’s economically illiterate warnings of meltdown in the money markets carried one message only: vote for us otherwise we’ll get the markets to tear the house down. And their supine defence of Lord Ashcroft’s tax status carried one message only: there’s one rule for the little people, and another rule for us. If David Cameron really wanted to prove that he believes in a new politics, he should have sacked Lord Ashcroft as vice chairman of the Conservative Party long ago.

Meanwhile, the Labour Party can’t believe its luck: with one bound Gordon Brown and Peter Mandelson are free from defending the indefensible – 13 years of broken promises, a record of betrayal of what progressive politics is supposed to be about. Unregulated greed in the banks. Inequality up, social mobility down. The mass incarceration of young people. The decimation of our civil liberties. A political system in crisis. No wonder they prefer the trench warfare of point-scoring instead. Gordon Brown lumberingly sets out his dividing lines: implausible pledges which no one believes to keep on spending and spending; a promise of free personal care for the elderly which will in truth deprive many vulnerable people of the care they desperately need; a deathbed conversion to the most minimal changes possible to our electoral system; a one-off levy on bankers’ bonuses while the banks cut lending to viable British businesses; a laughable slogan to deliver “a future fair for all” as unfairness deepens everywhere.

Gone from both parties is any sense of a coherent ideology, or a plan for governing Britain. They have their sights focused on 6 May, not on the a wider vision of what kind of society we want to be.

But it really doesn’t need to be like this. Just because the old parties choose to cling to the politics of spite doesn’t mean the rest of us can’t hope and strive for something better. Liberal Democrats remain determined to transform British politics, once and for all. We want to create a plural, vibrant politics where everybody’s voice is heard and every vote counts, where politics is a battle of ideas, not a contest of advertising budgets. The old parties are locked in a battle for knock-out supremacy, when people in modern Britain are crying out for something new.

Gordon Brown and David Cameron will tell you that the only choice is between left and right, between red and blue. But people no longer believe there are only two answers to every problem. Modern Britain is diverse, mobile and changing fast. The cramped duopoly that has dominated our politics for so long no longer reflects the varied aspirations, hopes and ambitions of modern Britain.

In truth, there is a bigger choice to make today: between the old politics and the new.

Liberal Democrat Leader, Nick Clegg

By Andrew Grice, The Independent: Monday, 8 March 2010 

A senior adviser to the Conservatives will today warn that the party could plunge Britain back into recession if it brings in big public spending cuts immediately after winning the general election.

Sir Alan Budd, who would head a new independent Office of Budget Responsibility to enforce financial discipline under a Tory government, will say: “If you go too quickly then there is a risk that the recovery will be snuffed out and we will go back into a recession. I mean what the Americans say, ‘Remember 1937′.” ……..Full story @ http://bit.ly/cxYWkN

The Liberal Democrats have stepped up their pressure on the part nationalised banks, and this week they will focus their attention on the loss making bank Lloyds – the bank that use to say yes.

Loss-making Lloyds bank must reveal how far it has fallen short of its 2009 lending targets, say the Liberal Democrats. The Banking Group must now say how far it is falling short of government lending targets; the Liberal Democrats want the bailed-out bank to come clean.

Loss-making Lloyds, which is 41% owned by taxpayers, came under fire when it published its 2009 results last month, for refusing to disclose “net” lending figures that would show whether or not it had met the targets set by the government to keep £11bn of credit flowing during the recession.

Business groups have complained that firms are still struggling to get finance, echoing official data showing lending by banks to companies fell last year for the first time since records began.

 Now the Liberal Democrats are stepping up their criticism of Lloyds, demanding more transparency. “Where are Lloyds’s net lending figures?” asked the Liberal Democrat Treasury Spokesperson, Lord Oakeshott. “It is now a year since targets were set. They have produced their results and had promised they would show how far they had fallen short and they haven’t.

“It’s absolutely the public’s right to know how far Lloyds have fallen behind their commitment.”

Speaking on the Andrew Marr Show Sunday morning the Liberal Democrat Shadow Chancellor, Vince Cable said the Liberal Democrats would be willing to work with either of the other parties in the event of a hung parliament, although he refused to expand on how they would approach such a scenario.

Vince Cable was clear in his opinion that a hung parliament was not something to be feared, he said,

“I think we could work with other parties, why not? The public expects us to be business like.”

“The public mood is very much for politicians to work with each other rather than doing tribal politics,” he added.

However, he refused to “spell out” exactly how the Liberal Democrats would approach the other parties in the event of a hung parliament.

“I don’t think it’s helpful or necessary to spell out precisely what that means… I think it’s important for the public to know what broad approach we would take.”

“Any deal breakers are things that we discuss publicly – we want to see financial responsibility, fair taxation, and the British economy rebalanced in terms of finance,” he added.

Vince Cable dispelled the myth that coalition governments mean weak leadership, he was keen to point out that in many respects they have a good record in dealing with economic crises and rejected the assertion that fear of a hung parliament had caused the pound to sink last week.

THE PUBLIC MOOD IS VERY MUCH FOR POLITICIANS TO WORK WITH EACH OTHER RATHER THAN DOING TRIBAL POLITICS SAYS VINCE CABLE 

“All the evidence from countries in the western world is minority governments have a better record in managing economic crises,” he said.

On the supposed link between speculation of a hung parliament and the pound’s fall, Vince Cable said: “I don’t think the two things are connected we have a very small downward movement in the pound earlier this week…It was given a political spin.” He said the fall in sterling was most likely a consequence of Prudential’s activities.

Vince Cable reiterated that the Liberal Democrats would look to ensure financial responsibility and fair taxation in government.

“Our view is that of course as a party we have got to be on the side of financial responsibility, we don’t want to see any damage to the national economy,” he said.

“The specific tax increase we have advocated is in relation to the banking system…the banks are currently underwritten by the taxpayer…we think they should pay for that insurance,” Vince Cable added

In a speech to the Association of School and College Leaders today, Liberal Democrat Leader Nick Clegg will propose a deal with schools.

Nick Clegg will argue that in return for the investment of an additional £2.5bn in schools, teachers will be put under pressure to ‘raise their game’ to reinvent the curriculum, increase the number of children achieving good results and close the gap between disadvantaged pupils and their wealthier classmates.

He will also attack the Conservatives for pledging to help poorer pupils without allocating any funding to pay for it and accuse the Government of ‘not funding, but buying’ schools

To give every child a fair start in life, the Liberal Democrats will spend an extra £2.5bn on schools, guaranteeing them the money they need to support children who are struggling.

 Nick Clegg will say:

“Today, I ask our schools and colleges to sign up to a deal with the Liberal Democrats: We will give you everything we can. We will find you extra funding, even while elsewhere there are cuts. We will give a level of freedom you haven’t known for decades. But, in return, we will place the greatest expectations on you any government ever has. 

“One - we will expect you to transform the curriculum, so that it is rich, relevant, and stretches the brightest pupils while elevating those who struggle. Two - we will be much more ambitious about the number of young men and women leaving school with good results. Three – we will expect you to close the gap between poorer children and their wealthier classmates. A gap which entrenches inequality in Britain today.

“That deal is a new settlement for schools and government. Once it is in place we will get on with governing, you will get on with teaching, and children will benefit most of all. Let’s take our side of the bargain first. We are proposing an extra investment of £2.5bn for our schools. Around an extra £2,500 will be allocated for each pupil in receipt of free school meals. Raising the amount allocated for the poorest children to levels spent per pupil in fee-paying schools.

“The budgets of schools with similar catchments, but in different parts of the country, can vary wildly. Our Pupil Premium ensures every school taking a child from a disadvantaged background, no matter where it is, gets extra money to provide extra support.

“Money you can spend as you see fit – perhaps to cut class sizes, provide extra one-to-one tuition, evening or weekend classes. It would be up to you.

“Unlike the Conservatives, who have promised money to help poorer pupils without actually allocating a single penny to pay for it, we want to give schools certainty about the resources they can expect.

“So, to be absolutely clear: our Pupil Premium is new money. As the IFS pointed out earlier this week, unless a Pupil Premium is funded with extra cash, many schools – particularly secondaries – will suffer significant budget cuts.

“Labour didn’t fund schools, they bought schools. The price of unprecedented investment was untrammelled control.

“So, more freedom, more funding, that is our side of the bargain. What about yours? We will give you money, we will cut the reins, but our expectations on you will be high. We will expect you to reinvent the curriculum so it is broad and relevant. We will expect you to increase the number of children achieving good results. We will expect you to close the gap between disadvantaged pupils and their wealthier peers.

“I am tired of the buck passing that dominates the debate over education in this country. When pupils do badly, government blames schools, schools blame government, and parents are left watching endless finger-pointing that does nothing to help their children.

“We want to make Britain a place where it is no longer possible, on a pupil’s first day of school, to predict how well they’ll do simply by asking them how much their parents earn. 

“So, a deal between government and schools: Money and freedom in return for high expectations and more ambition.”

Significant closures of the M6 Motorway are planned for this weekend to enable work on the Active Traffic Management Project to proceed in safety.

Tonight, Friday the M6 Northbound will be completely closed from J10 to J12 from 10pm until approximately 8am saturday . The signed diversion route will be the A454 Black Country Route to the keyway Island, where it will leave Walsall Borough and continue through Wolverhampton to rejoin the M6 at J12.

Tomorrow Saturday the M6 will be closed Southbound from J10 to J8  and the M6 Northbound J7 to J10 will be closed from 8pm to approximately 10am Sunday. The signed diversion route will be A454 Wolverhampton Road/A4148 Broadway North/A34 Birmingham Road.

Unusual traffic paterns can be expected on other routes as motorists make use of satalite navigation. Given the earlier start of closure on Saturday evening closure, there is potential for significant inconvenience to be experienced by local residents. 

The Times: 05 Mar 2010 

MPs voted to wrest control of Commons business from the whips yesterday in the most significant change to the way that the House operates in 30 years.

Gordon Brown and David Cameron failed to water down the reforms, which will allow members and chairmen of select committees to be elected by MPs rather than chosen by whips.

It is the biggest change since the creation of departmental committees in 1979, but there is now a race against time to implement the changes before the general election.

Labour and Tory frontbench opposition to the move was defeated by a wide margin as MPs voted to give themselves greater powers to hold the Government to account. Full story from The Times….. http://bit.ly/aQyl8q

  Earlier this evening I received an email from Danny Alexander MP, Chief of Staff to Nick Clegg; he is calling upon Lib Dem supporters to read a new book that supports the Liberal Democrat case for Fairness.

Please take time to read email below, and tell your friends.

Dear Ian, 

Today, a book is published called ‘Why Vote Liberal Democrat’.

It makes a compelling case for supporting our party in the General Election. And it’s a great read for anyone interested in politics - long-standing Party members and floating voters alike. 

You can buy a copy of “Why Vote Lib Dem” here for just £6.99. 

The book contains chapters from a whole range of people, all arguing that a Liberal Democrat government is what our country desperately needs. 

Contributors include: 

Ø     Actor, and hopefully soon to be Oscar winner, Colin Firth. Colin says of the Liberal Democrats; “whenever I look for compassionate and intellectually rigorous politics I keep coming back to them.”  

Ø     TV personality and education campaigner Floella Benjamin; “I am proud to be a member of the Liberal Democrats – the only party with ambition and real commitment to opening up opportunities for all Britain’s children.”  

Ø     Director of the Power 2010 campaign Pam Giddy; “the Liberal Democrats have consistently called for reform of this ‘rotten’ Westminster system.”  

Ø     Former Director of Public Prosecutions, Sir Ken MacDonald; “The point about the Liberal Democrats is that they have been steadfast in defending freedom – and their consistency deserves support.” 

Nick Clegg and our party is taking an offer of fairness to the British people at this election - fairness in taxation, education, job and homes, and political reform. It’s an offer that is gathering increasing support at the election draws nearer.  

Thank you for everything you are doing to support our campaign.  

Best wishes, 

Danny Alexander MP

Chief of Staff to Nick Clegg 

PS. Buying the book through the party’s Amazon affinity scheme is an excellent way to contribute to our campaigning funds: you can find it here. ‘Why Vote Liberal Democrat’ is also available through all good bookshops. 

Follow the Liberal Democrats online: 

Liberal Democrats

Twitter: twitter.com/libdems 

Facebook: facebook.com/libdems 

YouTube: youtube.com/libdem

In this issue of LD2010 Nick calls for a fair start for children, Vince answers your questions on the economy and we launch ‘Why Vote Lib Dem.

http://bit.ly/9s0mGG

“The Liberal Democrats will change the rules so that fuel bills reflect fuel costs and consumers are not ripped off again and again,” said the Liberal Democrat Shadow Energy and Climate Change Secretary.

Commenting on Scottish and Southern Energy’s decision to cut gas bills by an average of 4%, Simon Hughes said:

“Token price cuts in March won’t fool customers already hit by bumper bills.

“Wholesale prices have plummeted but customers have hardly seen any benefit.

“The Liberal Democrats will change the rules so that fuel bills reflect fuel costs and consumers are not ripped off again and again.”

“It’s the equivalent of a criminal suspect asking a police officer whether their work is really necessary,” said the Liberal Democrat Shadow Home Secretary.

Commenting on reports from the Electoral Commission that Tory officials had refused requests to be interviewed by investigators, Chris Huhne said:

“It’s extraordinary that officials of a major political party should refuse a meeting to answer questions from the regulator designed to ensure funding is open and honest.

“It’s the equivalent of a criminal suspect asking a police officer whether their work is really necessary. 

“The Conservatives must now answer the question about who told their officials to withhold cooperation from the Electoral Commission. On whose authority was this request refused?”

Around 110,000 women are each set to miss out on up to £10,400 over the next decade because they were born as little as a day too early to benefit from changes to state pension rules, Liberal Democrat research has revealed.

Government reforms mean that from 6 April this year, both men and women will need to make 30 years of National Insurance payments to be eligible for the full state pension.

The changes mean that a woman who has paid National Insurance for 30 years whose 60th birthday falls on 6 April would be entitled to a full state pension, whereas a woman who was born a day earlier and has worked just as long would only be entitled to three quarters of this – or around £75 a week in 2010-11. This could mean women retiring this year before the 6 April cut off could miss out on as much as £10,400 over the next decade.

Commenting, Liberal Democrat Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary, Steve Webb said: 

“The April 2010 changes to the rules on state pensions are entirely welcome and long overdue. But they create a cliff-edge for those who reach pension age immediately beforehand. 

“Many of these women could lose out on up to £10,000 simply for being born a few days too early.  

“Big changes like this should be phased in. Even now, the Government could look again at how it is working out pensions for women retiring in 2009/10 and consider giving them some of the benefit of the new rules.”

  The news that President Obama is demanding that the big banks in America be split up, to protect small investors from the excesses of the investment market, is an echo of the advice that the Liberal Democrat Shadow Chancellor, Vince Cable was giving our Government even before the banking crisis broke. 

“Much still needs to be done to sort out the banking system,” said Vince Cable. “The Government (and the Conservatives) are desperate to return to ‘business as usual.’ I believe this to be an utterly wrong approach.” 

Vince Cable went on to add: “There is still a major problem of credit supply to good British businesses and local companies and the Government has failed to use its position as shareholder to prevent banks lurching from recklessness to extreme conservatism.” 

He concluded by saying: “The banks must start lending to business again and the large banks with their casino banking practices need to be broken up.” 

Liberal Democrat MP for North Devon, Nick Harvey comments: “I am still getting complaints from local small businesses about unfair banking practices. In a recent case, a business built up over 5 years which never missed a payment on its agreed overdraft limit, and had full bookings for the next two years, suddenly found that the bank had decided to revalue the business and as a result put them into administration. “A viable business, good credit performance, sound management, full bookings, but still not good enough for the bank. Shameful!” concludes Nick Harvey.

“Overcrowding means children unable to do their homework, and families falling apart due to the stress of living on top of each other,” said the Liberal Democrat Shadow Housing Minister.

Commenting on today’s petition by Shelter to update the 1935 overcrowding standard, Sarah Teather said:

“Labour’s betrayal of the hundreds of thousands of families stuck in cramped conditions is frankly unforgivable.
 
“Overcrowding means children unable to do their homework, and families falling apart due to the stress of living on top of each other. 
 
“Labour has left us right back where we were under the last Conservative Government.  We urgently need to bringing many more homes back into use and update the outdated rules on overcrowding.
 
“People should not be condemned to homes more suitable for battery hens.”

“We need to make sure every child gets an excellent education, not just a lucky few,” the Liberal Democrat Shadow Schools Secretary will say.

At a speech to CentreForum’s Conference on ‘School Reform; from policy to practice’ today, David Laws will say:

“The Conservatives’ plans for education are fundamentally flawed.

“Their apparent commitment to a Pupil Premium is totally meaningless unless extra money is put in.  Without extra money, many schools will see their budgets cut.  

“This will be even more devastating at a time when public spending will be squeezed, especially as the Tories are already targeting the Education budget for cuts.

“It makes no sense to give freedoms to some schools, but deny them to others.  The Conservative plans to simply rely on the market, without any accountability or local oversight will not work and will have little impact in the vast majority of schools. 

“We need to make sure every child gets an excellent education, not just a lucky few.”

“He always stood up for what he believed in, even if that meant inviting unpopularity at times. His intellectual integrity is an example to everyone in politics,” said the Liberal Democrat Leader.

Commenting on the death of former Labour Leader Michael Foot, Nick Clegg said:

“Michael Foot was great parliamentarian, a great intellectual and a great idealist.

“He always stood up for what he believed in, even if that meant inviting unpopularity at times. His intellectual integrity is an example to everyone in politics.”

Actor Colin Firth, former Director of Public Prosecutions Sir Ken Macdonald QC and musician Brian Eno have all contributed to a book entitled ‘Why Vote Liberal Democrat’.

The book, which goes on sale on today, covers topics as varied as fair taxes, gay rights, looking after our armed forces, political reform and the fight against climate change.

Other contributors include Gurkha veteran Madan Kumar Gurung, political reform campaigner Pam Giddy and Duwayne Brooks, Stephen Lawrence’s best friend who was with him on the night he died.

Commenting Liberal Democrat Leader Nick Clegg said:

“There are hundreds of reasons to vote Liberal Democrat, but there is also just one reason: the will to create a better, fairer Britain by doing things differently. This is what unites all the contributors to this book.

“I am delighted such a great group of people from so many different backgrounds have come together to share their reasons for backing the Liberal Democrats.”

http://bit.ly/a8dJ5O

Councillors across Willenhall are united on one thing; none of us want to see Willenhall lose its leisure centre, but Walsall’s Tory Cabinet does and it’s how we change its mind that we need to decide, and when I say we I mean all of us, the community that is Willenhall. That message came across loud and clear at last night’s Public Meeting on the future of the Leisure Centre. 

The cost of running Willenhall Leisure Centre is probably no more than the cost of running other leisure centres across the Borough of Walsall. The problem we’ve got is that fewer people use Willenhall. This puts the unit cost up to around £4 per person at Willenhall as opposed to around £2 per person using other centres. Putting that into context, the cost per person using Walsall’s Art Gallery is around £6.

As usual the Tories know the price of everything and the value of nothing. That’s what we in Willenhall are up against. Can you imagine what the state of our services would be if they were to win the General Election? Walsall’s Tory leader has already eluded to the possibility of massive job cuts in the coming years.

On a positive note, the numbers using the centre continue to rise. There is a short term plan, which if agreed, will reduce the need for subsidy to levels equal to that of other centres across the Borough. And a good many ideas were put forward to increase usage which need to be given further consideration.

A further meeting between Willenhall’s nine councillors and the Friends Group is being arranged. It was planned to go ahead on the 18th March through Willenhall’s Regeneration Project Reference Group, but there appears to be a dispute with the Council as to whether this is a regeneration issue. Either way a meeting will be arranged and a proposal will be ready for the April deadline set by Walsall Tories.

“We urgently need a nationwide scheme to make every home a warm home,” said the Liberal Democrat Shadow Energy and Climate Change Secretary.

Commenting on the Government’s announcement of a green loans scheme for households who want to make energy efficient improvements to their homes, Simon Hughes said:

“It is staggering that it has taken this Government nearly 13 years to come up with plans to green our homes and cut people’s fuels bills.

“Refurbishing our homes should be a win-win situation, but Labour has bungled this kind of thing before.

“Today’s announcement will leave millions of families without the warm homes they need for up to 20 years.

“We urgently need a nationwide scheme to make every home a warm home.”

Lord Ashcroft is estimated to have saved more than £127m in British tax since he became a member of the House of Lords, according to Liberal Democrat research.

Lord Ashcroft’s annual tax saving is conservatively estimated to be £12.76m and he has been a member of the House of Lords for a decade.

Commenting, Liberal Democrat Shadow Home Secretary, Chris Huhne said:

“Anyone who wants to pass laws in this country should pay this country’s full taxes and not hide behind the special offshore status of non-doms.
 
“Non-doms have to tell the taxman that their first allegiance is to another country. No-one should be a British lawmaker whose first allegiance is not to Britain.
 
“On even the most conservative estimates, Lord Ashcroft has avoided vast amounts of British tax by deploying the non-dom tax dodge. If he challenges our estimate of how much tax he has dodged, then there is a simple solution: publish the figure.”

“While the BBC has become overgrown in some areas and needs pruning, the Licence Fee payers must have their say about what’s to go,” said the Liberal Democrat Shadow Culture, Media and Sport Secretary.

Commenting ahead of today’s publication of the BBC strategy which could see its website scaled back and radio stations 6 Music and Asian Network closed, Don Foster said:

“Today’s report signals the end of the BBC roaming wherever it fancied. The decision to focus on high quality UK content is welcome.
 
“However, I am not convinced that using 6 Music and the Asian Network as sacrificial lambs to pay for it is the right approach.
 
“While the BBC has become overgrown in some areas and needs pruning, the Licence Fee payers must have their say about what’s to go.”

A rundown shopping precinct in Willenhall is to come under scrutiny in an attempt to resolve long standing problems reports Liberal Democrat councillor Ian Shires.

Ian, along with fellow Lib Dem councillors Val Woodruff and Pete Hughes, have received complaints from local residents on the Broadway Estate in New Invention, Willenhall, about the rundown state of the shopping precinct in Nottingham Drive.

The precinct is in private ownership and complaints range from litter, graffiti and bollards being removed to allow unofficial parking which creates problems for pedestrians.

“There’s no doubt that the appearance of this 1960’s style shopping precinct spoils a pleasant residential area” said Ian.

“In fairness, the owners have tried to carry out improvements mainly to the living accommodation above the shops, but the long standing issues of litter and graffiti have proved difficult to resolve” continued Ian.

As a result councillors have called for a different approach. “Sending in the litter squad only provides a short term solution. Once they’ve gone the problems return. We have called for the Safer Walsall Partnership to look at what help can be brought in to work with the owners to provide a long term solution to the problem” concluded Ian.

Lib Dem Euro MP Liz Lynne has strongly backed a call in Brussels this week for a moratorium on penalties while technical problems with electronic sheep tags are ironed out…… http://bit.ly/aeZs7i

BBC News 1 Mar 10: The YamYam 01 Mar 2010
Higher charges on the M6 Toll motorway have come into force following a decision to increase prices for the sixth time in seven years…
http://bit.ly/aJPJVs

The General Election result risks being ‘tainted’ if the large sums donated by Lord Ashcroft to the Conservatives are found to be illegal, the Liberal Democrats have said.

Liberal Democrat Shadow Home Secretary, Chris Huhne has written to the Electoral Commission to ask it to conclude its inquiry before the General Election.
 
In the letter, Chris Huhne said:

“Should the Conservative Party secure a majority following the General Election using donations made by Bearwood Corporate Services Limited, and your investigation were to conclude after the General Election that these donations were illegal, this would raise serious concerns about the legality and validity of the entire election result.”

“Liberal Democrats will give schools the money to cut class sizes and provide children who are struggling with more individual support by committing an extra £2.5bn,” said the Liberal Democrat Shadow Schools Secretary.

Commenting on today’s IFS report ‘The Pupil Premium: assessing the options’, which shows how many schools would have their budgets cut under Conservative plans to bring in a Pupil Premium without extra funding, David Laws said:

“This independent report confirms the Tories’ proposals would be disastrous for thousands of schools, wrecking opportunities for millions of children.  

“The Conservatives’ plans will mean many schools have their budgets slashed.
 
“David Cameron may talk about raising standards but his plans commit no pounds and no pence of extra money to our schools.  He now needs to be honest about the devastating impact this will have on England’s schools. 
 
“Liberal Democrats will give schools the money to cut class sizes and provide children who are struggling with more individual support by committing an extra £2.5bn. This extra cash and our plans to set schools free to raise standards will give every child a fair start in life.”

“The Conservatives’ biggest donor is a tax-dodger from Belize,” said the Liberal Democrat Shadow Home Secretary.

Commenting on Lord Ashcroft’s admission that he is non-domiciled for tax purposes, Chris Huhne said:

“The Conservatives’ biggest donor is a tax-dodger from Belize who has not paid a penny of British tax on the vast bulk of his estimated £1.1bn fortune held offshore.

“This raises extraordinary questions about the judgement of successive Tory leaders - William Hague, Michael Howard and David Cameron - whose view seems to be that only little people should pay tax.

“The Tory party has been bought like a banana republic.”

Liberal Democrat Deputy Leader and Shadow Chancellor Vince Cable in a speech to the Green Alliance has today re-affirmed the Liberal Democrat commitment to environmentalism.

Full text @ http://bit.ly/cUEjqf

“Labour has been just as guilty as the Tories of posturing on penalties and peddling fear,” said the Liberal Democrat Shadow Home Secretary.

Commenting on Gordon Brown’s speech on crime and anti-social behaviour, Chris Huhne said:

“Labour has been just as guilty as the Tories of posturing on penalties and peddling fear.

“Labour and the Conservatives have indulged in a sentencing arms race in a desperate attempt to look tough, rather than back more police officers which is the best way to cut crime.”

“Ministers love kicking difficult political decisions into the long grass. They must come clean about cuts to council funding,” said the Liberal Democrat Shadow Local Government Secretary.

Commenting on today’s BBC survey which reveals tens of thousands of council jobs in England could be at risk over the next five years, Julia Goldsworthy said:

“Three quarters of council money comes from Government grants.  John Denham’s attempt to wash his hands of blame is outrageous.
 
“Councils are currently working in the dark and planning for worst case scenarios as Labour refuses to publish the spending review they promised last summer.
 
“Ministers love kicking difficult political decisions into the long grass.  They must come clean about cuts to council funding.”

Liberal Democrat Leader Nick Clegg has today set out the importance of early years education in tackling inequality in a speech to the Salvation Army. Committing the Liberal Democrats to invest an extra £2.5bn in schools, Nick Clegg said that parents and schools must work together to make sure that children get the best possible start in life.

Full text @ http://bit.ly/9wTl9Y

“We need fair taxation, new green jobs, a fair start for our children and a fair political system,” said the Liberal Democrat Shadow Home Secretary.

Commenting on David Cameron’s speech at Tory spring conference Chris Huhne said:

“Once again the speech was short on specifics and on the key assurance of fairness that is essential if we are to tackle our economic problems.

“We need fair taxation, new green jobs, a fair start for our children and a fair political system that gives voters real choice to sack miscreant MPs.”

“We need a fair planning system that is responsive to people’s needs,” said the Liberal Democrat Shadow Energy and Climate Change Secretary.

Commenting as the Government’s new Infrastructure Planning Commission [IPC] starts to accept applications from developers, Simon Hughes said:

“The Government’s planning stitch-up means big energy projects like dirty coal and new nuclear loom dangerously large.

“Local people with reasonable objections will find that the chips are stacked against them.

“Britain faces being locked in to a reckless and expensive energy mix which would be a colossal mistake.

“We need a fair planning system that is responsive to people’s needs and geared to the rapid development of renewable power.”

The Liberal Democrats will tomorrow vote in Parliament against the decision to freeze state pension top-up payments this April, which will leave almost nine million pensioners worse off.

Last December Ministers set out plans to freeze payments of the State Earnings Related Pension and the Second State Pension, effectively cutting state pension payments by £515million next year.

Commenting, Liberal Democrat Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary, Steve Webb said:

“Labour has betrayed pensioners by promising to increase their pensions when millions are actually set to receive a real-term cut this year.

“Freezing pension top-up payments will leave almost nine million older people worse off at a time when they are already struggling to make ends meet.

“Older people are already facing high fuel bills following this cold winter and rising inflation eroding their savings.

“The Liberal Democrats will vote against this latest example of the Government failing to give a fair deal to pensioners.”

Short Heath Liberal Democrat Focus Team has reported the “craters” in Stroud Avenue near its junction with Furzebank Way along with numerous other potholes in roads across Willenhall.

Seems it would be easier to list roads which were not affected by a combination of severe weather combined with a failure of Walsall Council to invest in roads across the Borough.

The Council’s response to the deteriorating situation of its roads is to send a truck round, chuck a bit of tar in the hole and get a workman to jump up and down on it, at least that’s what it seems like.

The Council tell us that these are temporary repairs. Permanent reinstatement’s will be carried out once the weather improves so they say.

The thing that concerns local Liberal Democrats is that these reinstatement’s will be carried out in the same priority order as was the gritting during the past month or so.

If this is the case then “craters” like those in Stroud Avenue will be with us for months to come as although the road is a major bus route and carries a lot of through traffic, it’s not classed as a major route and as such will come well down the list when it comes to a permanent reinstatement.

Focus Team councillors are to write to Highways Chiefs demanding a rethink on repairs to what are considered to be some of the worst roads in the West Midlands. 

  Tory Party activists have been gathering for their spring conference in Brighton, the last nationwide meeting before the start of the general election campaign.  

  The two-day spring conference comes at a time when support for the Tories has fallen dramatically; last year they looked unassailable but recent polls have suggested that their lead over Labour is narrowing.  

On the eve of the conference, it was revealed that the Tories’ election slogan will be “vote for change”. This message is likely to be central to David Cameron’s main speech on Sunday.  

Labour will use the Tory conference as an opportunity to launch a new poster attacking the shadow chancellor George Osborne.  

This weekend, the Labour party is releasing more pre-election campaign material. An image of shadow chancellor George Osborne is accompanied by the slogan “Chancer not Chancellor”.  

The Liberal Democrats say only they offer a change to the existing way of conducting politics.  

The Leader of Liberal Democrat’s Chief of Staff, Danny Alexander said: the election was not a choice between Mr Brown and Mr Cameron.  

“It’s between the old way of doing politics and the real change represented by the Liberal Democrats.  

“For people who want real change, real fairness in Britain there is only one choice: the Liberal Democrats. Labour has totally failed to make Britain fairer, and the Tories can’t be trusted to do.”

  Liberal Democrat MP for East Dunbartonshire, Jo Swinson has welcomed a Home Office report which recommends airbrushed adverts carry warning labels.

  The report by Dr. Linda Papadopoulous, which was released on Friday looks into the sexualisation of children in the media and its impacts on their behaviour.

The Liberal Democrats’ Real Women campaign has been calling for action on airbrushing and the sexualisation of children.

Commenting, Jo Swinson said: “The Government has been dismissive of Liberal Democrat proposals to tackle harmful airbrushing, but now the Home Office’s own review shows that this is issue which needs urgent action.

“Pressure on children to conform to unhealthy body image ideals is something many parents are extremely concerned about, and we welcome Dr. Papadopoulous’ report. When it comes to children, airbrushed adverts aimed at them need to be banned.

“We will be holding a body image debate in Parliament on 8th March to take this important campaign forward.”

The Liberal Democrats’ Real Women campaign contains the following recommendation on the sexualisation of children in the media:

Require OFCOM and the ASA to add a specific gender equality strand to their roles as media regulators. Currently any concerns about the increasing sexualisation of women can only be addressed on grounds of obscenity and decency but this does not address the effects that increasing sexualisation has on the development of young girls (and boys) and the concern voiced by the End Violence Against Women campaign that this increasing sexualisation creates a ‘conducive context for violence against women’.

A recent Liberal Democrat commissioned report by the world’s leading body image experts contained scientific evidence showing how the use of airbrushing to promote body perfect ideals in advertising is causing a host of problems in young women such as eating disorders, depression, extreme exercising and encouraging cosmetic surgery. The paper reveals that:

Ø     Body dissatisfaction is a significant risk for physical health, mental health, and thus well-being. Any factor, such as idealised media images, that increases body dissatisfaction is therefore an important influence on well-being

Ø     Negative effects occur in the clear majority of adolescent girls and women in over 100 published scientific studies on the impact of thin, ‘perfected’, media images on girls and women

Ø     The weight of evidence across a great many studies documents that ultra-thin and highly muscular ‘body perfect’ ideals have a detrimental effect on women and men

Ø     Adolescents are more vulnerable than adults to body perfect images

Ø     A subscription to a fashion magazine increased body dissatisfaction, dieting, and bulimic symptoms amongst adolescent girls who had low levels of social support

Ø     Curbing the impact of idealised media images leads to improvement in body image and body-related behaviour

The Liberal Democrats have passed policies at their September 2009 conference to:

Ø     Protect children from body image pressure by banning digital retouching in advertising aimed at under 16s

Ø     Ensure adverts aimed at adults indicate clearly the extent to which they have digitally retouched people         

Ø     Teach modules on body image, health and well-being, and media literacy in schools

Ø     Ensure schools include greater choice in physical activity to stop teenage girls dropping out of exercising

Ø     Invest money in improving school and community sports facilities to make them cleaner, safer and more female-friendly

Related Link: Real Women campaign

This article was written by Vince Cable and appeared in today’s Mail on Sunday

Anyone who thought that the credit crunch and the banking crisis were over can think again. We are back to bonuses beyond the wildest dreams of someone on an average salary; there is a choking credit squeeze on many British companies and those who work in them; and the profitable big banks that are ‘too big to fail’ have a taxpayer guarantee if they mess up. As for the customers, including millions of small savers, they are just treated as an embarrassing nuisance.

The public might well ask why, just over a year after the banking system had a massive heart attack and was saved at great expense by the taxpayer, the patient is so detached from reality and decency.

For me, the key issue is the failure of the banks, and in particular the semi-nationalised RBS and Lloyds, to meet legally binding obligations to maintain a flow of funds – net lending – to the sound and solvent small and medium-sized companies on which the British economy depends.

Credit is central to business, providing working capital to expand. Yet overall bank lending to business, outside of property, fell by 16.2 per cent last year. We put £46billion into RBS and £23billion into Lloyds – £1,200 for every man, woman and child in the UK – to save our economy and enable them to lend. They failed and the Government has encouraged them to push up the share price instead.

The banks’ explanation is that many businesses are cutting back, repaying loans rather than taking out loans to expand. The truth is that the so-called low demand for loans is because RBS and other banks will supply only at very high interest and with demands for more security.

I am not arguing for a moment that money be handed out to all-comers. But unless good, viable companies can get credit, the recession and job losses will continue. The semi-nationalised banks have a legal as well as commercial obligation to help support the recovery of the British economy.

The problem is the banks, including the semi-nationalised ones, are under pressure to boost their share prices. In the case of RBS and Lloyds the reason is that the Government wants to sell off its shares quickly.

The attraction to the banks of building up investment banking is that it creates a honey pot of bonuses. RBS is portraying itself as a paragon of puritan virtue because it has paid out only 30 per cent of profits in investment banking – £1.3billion – in bonuses; this is in a bank making overall losses and paying bonuses out of taxpayers’ money. I gather that 100 staff have taken more than £1million each.

One of the villains of the banking crisis, John Mack, chairman of the giant and venerable but humbled US bank Morgan Stanley, acknowledged last week that: ‘I still don’t think the industry gets it.’ It doesn’t.

RBS tries to justify its own payments by saying that all the investment bank profit will make it easier to repay the taxpayer. But much of the trading activity is in the bonds to finance Government borrowing. So the taxpayer is paying out of one pocket to be repaid in another.

RBS then says that, if we don’t pay our people, they will all migrate to American banks or hedge funds. We can’t disregard this argument, though it remains to be demonstrated that the bank could not function effectively with staff whose demands were considerably more modest.

The world of football offers us some clue about how to deal with highly paid prima donnas. Paying up can buy success (Chelsea) but it can also lead to bankruptcy (Portsmouth). Sensibly managed clubs – Everton, Aston Villa, Fulham – can do well by producing home-grown talent and good teamwork.So what can be done about these spoilt financial superstars who threaten to burst into tears and jump out of the pram if they don’t earn a million a year? We should start with more transparency and disclosure. RBS won’t tell us who these millionaires are even though they are paid with public money. We have a right to know.

But this problem of extreme bonuses and pay can’t be tackled without dealing with the money-making machines – the investment banks – and the way in which they distort the whole purpose of financial services. The emphasis is on short-term speculation – the ‘casino’ function – so they continue to behave dangerously knowing they have a taxpayer guarantee.

Last week Mervyn King, governor of the Bank of England, argued strongly for the breaking up of the big banks, both to create more competition and to prevent the ‘casinos’ having this taxpayer guarantee. The rather pathetic response of the Government is that this is all very difficult and, anyway, we can’t do anything unless the rest of the world also acts.

The problem for Britain is that the banks are a far bigger part of the economy than they are in America, France and Germany. When they get into trouble and have to be rescued by the taxpayer, Britain suffers worst. This is one of the main reasons why Britain’s recession is so hard. Unless there is strong leadership and a change of direction, I fear that we will just drift into the next banking disaster. And that can’t be allowed to happen.

Liberal Democrat Shadow Chancellor, Vince Cable

On Monday night, Gordon Brown faces a crucial showdown over Labour’s plans to “squeeze” the benefits of nine million pensioners – it is expected that the government will save half a billion pounds. 

The Government has proposed freezing part of the state pension from April, yet is telling hard-up retirees they are getting a good deal.

Although the basic state pension of £92.25 a week is set to rise by 2.5 per cent, Chancellor Alistair Darling decided not to apply the hike to the other top-ups such as the new state second pension that make up the total take-home package.

The move will hit millions, and with inflation now standing at 3.5 per cent, the Liberal Democrats claim it amounts to a cut in real terms.

  The Leader of the Liberal Democrats, Nick Clegg is hopeful that he can persuade Labour backbenchers to join a vote against the freeze in a Commons motion tomorrow night.

  Nick Clegg told the Sunday Express last night: “It amounts to a huge pension’s betrayal.  

“You’ve got nine million pensioners receiving letters telling them what’s going to happen to their pension from April and they think they’ve been promised a rise from Brown, but in fact when you look at the small print what they’ll see is actually a real terms cut.

“It’s about half a billion pounds less for those nine million pensioners than they should be entitled to.

“That’s short-changing nine million pensioners to the tune of about £60 each for this coming year.

“It’s outrageous that Brown and Darling are trying to describe a cut as a rise.”

In a swipe at Labour’s election slogan, he added: “This is not a future fairer for all, this is a deception.”

He said that £60 “was not a small amount”. 

Nick Clegg also said: “We got a letter from a pensioner couple in Sheffield who found it so difficult to heat their home on a cold day, they travel the bus around Sheffield just to stay warm.

“Tell that couple that £60 is not a lot, particularly with the cold weather and the bills that couple have to face.”

Speaking earlier this afternoon on the BBC News following the Tory Leaders’ speech the Liberal Democrat Shadow Home Secretary, Chris Huhnesaid: David Cameron’s description of himself as a “salesman” at the Tory spring conference today would make people feel “wary.” 

“If you turn up on someone’s door and try and sell them double glazing people are often wary,” he said. 

“Does he really promise anything other than changing the people in the government?” Chris Huhne asked. 

Chris Huhne said that people were looking for “real change in the political system” in the upcoming election. 

He also said thought that “the real failing” of Mr Cameron’s speech was the lack of an assurance of fairness, the key aspect upon which the Liberal Democrats are fighting their election campaign. 

Commenting on the prospect of a Hung Parliament following the dramatic narrowing of the opinion polls in recent weeks; Chris Huhne said: that in the event his party would not seek to capitalise on it. 

“The key thing is not what we can gain from it, the key thing is what is best for the country,” he said. 

“People don’t want to see politicians squabbling.” 

“We are not the kingmakers, the people are the kingmakers,” Chris Huhne added.

Liberal Democrat MP for East Dunbartonshire, Jo Swinson has criticised the Government for spending just £30 million of a promised £152 million of key environmental and renewable energy funds over the last three years. 

The Liberal Democrats have revealed through Freedom of Information requests to the Department for Energy and Climate Change found that just a fraction of budgets and funds for carbon reduction and renewable energy have been spent, despite Gordon Brown’s claims that the schemes, part of the Environmental Transformation Fund, would “help bring […] technologies to the marketplace, creating businesses and jobs.” 

The research also found that: 

The Low Carbon Buildings Programme phase 2 had a budget of £34m for 2006/07-2008/09, but distributed less than £10m 

The Marine Renewables Deployment Fund (MRDF) - a £50m fund that has operated for 3 years - still has over £48m unallocated despite previous criticism of its effectiveness 

There had been ‘no successful applications to the MRDF commercial demonstration scheme’ despite the Government’s claim that it expected the first successful applications early in 2009 

Commenting, Jo Swinson said: “It beggars belief that labour is throwing away this opportunity at a time of such high unemployment, the Government is failing to spend the money it has promised for revitalising the economy. These funds could be creating new jobs in East Dunbartonshire and in the rest of Britain and helping to build a low carbon economy. 

“Renewable energy and low carbon technology represent fantastic opportunities for our economy. Britain should be leading the world in cutting its emissions, and we cannot afford to miss opportunities like this or we will simply be left behind while other countries prosper from these new technologies. 

“Sadly Labour are failing Britain on jobs and on the environment. The Liberal Democrats would prioritise investment in green jobs, for the sake of our planet and our economy.” 

1.     Four key UK-wide programmes - worth a combined £152m - under the Government’s Environmental Transformation Fund were looked at - details of budgets and underspends are as follows: 

Low Carbon Buildings Programme phase 1 

Total UK Budget FY 06/07 - FY 08/09 = £18,233,000; spend = £17,485,118; underspend = £747,882  Low Carbon Buildings Programme phase 2 

Total UK Budget FY 2006/07 to FY 2008/09: £34,182,578 ; spend £9,711,672 ; underspend = £24,470,906 

Marine Renewables Deployment Fund 

£50m UK-wide fund, but over the three years of its operation so far (FY 06/07 - FY 08/09) spend has been just £1,643,000  –> £48,489,000 unspent. In addition, the latest information says there are still “no successful applications to the MRDF commercial demonstration scheme.” 

Hydrogen Fuel Cells and Carbon Abatement Technologies Demonstration Programme 

Ø       £50m programme (originally announced in 06 as a £40m programme, but additional £10m was later announced for CAT)

Ø       CAT: total UK spend FY 06/07 - 08/09 = £600,000

Ø       HFCs: total

2.     In 2008, the Liberal Democrats revealed that no company had qualifed for funding under the MRDF’s commercial demonstration scheme. At the time, a spokesperson for DECC said: “We anticipate the Marine Renewables Deployment Fund’s demonstration scheme will receive its first successful applications for support early next year.” 

3.     Gordon Brown claimed in 2007 that “the new £370 million domestic environmental transformation fund” - of which these schemes form part - would “help bring these technologies to the marketplace, creating businesses and jobs.” 

Related Link: Liberal Democrat plans to create green jobs can be found here

Ahead of the debate in the House of Commons on the renewal of the use of control orders for another year, Liberal Democrat Shadow Home Secretary, Chris Huhne has written to the Conservatives to ask them if they will be voting against this renewal in the debate.

Chris Huhne said:

“We should not be the sort of country where ministers put people under house arrest without them even knowing the accusations against them. Control orders are pure Kafka and must end.
 
“Control orders are a constant reproach to Labour’s liberal credentials. The Conservatives have promised to vote with us against them but have repeatedly bottled out of doing so.

“Their line seems to be ‘Lord, make me liberal but not yet’.”

“The implication that David Miliband had the wool pulled over his eyes is deeply embarrassing for the Foreign Secretary,” said the Liberal Democrat Shadow Foreign Secretary.

Commenting on the publication of a judge’s criticism of the security services, which stated that some officials ‘appear to have a dubious record when it comes to human rights and coercive techniques’, and that while ‘the good faith of the Foreign Secretary is not in question’, there is ‘an obvious reason for distrusting any UK Government assurance’ on mistreatment, Edward Davey said:

“The implication that David Miliband had the wool pulled over his eyes is deeply embarrassing for the Foreign Secretary.

“However, the suggestion that he acted in good faith means the real questions need to be answered by others in Government. Did former Foreign Secretary Jack Straw sign off on the ‘coercive techniques’ referred to in the judgement?

“The suggestion that there were others in the security services involved in unacceptable practices makes the need for a full judicial inquiry irrefutable.

“But it must be asked how appropriate it is for Jack Straw to remain in charge of this country’s justice system when there are such serious questions laid at his door.”

This weeks Liberal Democrat Councillor’s surgery is at Oakwood Lodge in Chaucer Avenue, Short Heath. Liberal Democrat Councillor Ian Shires will be at the Centre from 7pm to 8pm tonight (Friday).

So if you’ve got a problem you’d like to get off your chest or you just want some information, why not pop along.

Hard core anti social behaviour is to be targeted by Willenhall Liberal Democrats reports Liberal Democrat Group Leader councillor Ian Shires.

Figures show that in general anti social behaviour has reduced across Willenhall, but go and tell that to residents living near to the linear walkway off Stroud Avenue, Short Heath and those living near to the children’s play area in Brereton Road, New Invention and see what response you get.

Residents from both areas approached members of the Willenhall Local Neighbourhood Partnership (LNP) for help at their last meeting.

“Everyone recognises that kids need space to let off steam, but what is going on in these areas goes beyond what is reasonable” said Ian. Residents told members of the LNP that they were subjected to attacks on property, foul language during drinking sessions which in some cases go on till the early hours.

It is clear that a traditional approach to this sort of problem just does not work. Responsibility for tackling the long term, hard core, causes cuts across a number of agencies. When they act in isolation the problem moves away to another area for a while and then returns.

“What is needed is a multi agency approach” said Ian, “and with that in mind Liberal Democrat councillors in Short heath and Willenhall North have asked Walsall Partnership’s Community Action Tasking Group to intervene” concluded Ian.   

The first formal India Pakistan talks since the Mumbai attacks in 2008 are a vital step forward for moves to a lasting peaceful settlement in Kashmir, local Lib Dem Euro MP Liz Lynne said at the European Parliament today.

The West Midlands MEP, a long time campaigner for justice in Kashmir, said the trip by the Pakistan foreign minister to Delhi today was an encouraging sign that the two nuclear powers were serious about restarting a comprehensive dialogue.

Liz Lynne said: “This is good news because there can be no progress to ending the continued injustice and conflict in Kashmir without dialogue that involves Pakistan, India and the Kashmiri people………… http://bit.ly/d4L4BL

The Leader of the Liberal Democrats today responded to questions posted to Facebook and Twitter in his latest online Q & A session with voters.

You can view a short video of Nick Clegg answering some of the questions at :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCofgfwUm5A

Questions covered: Support for carers, voter apathy, voting Lib Dem, military pay, the ‘Robin Hood Tax’, democratic accountability, Scottish independence; the hunger strikers and rights of children at Yarl’s Wood detention centre and whether he prefers tea or coffee.

Keep your questions flowing for Nick as he is keen to answer them as often as possible in sessions just like this.

Ask your questions on: Facebook and Twitter.

“The Government has implemented these new regulations without making sure that they will actually work on the ground,” said the Liberal Democrat Shadow Health Secretary.

Commenting on today’s report by the Royal College of Surgeons, which reveals that the chaotic introduction of new child safeguarding regulations is leading to cancelled operations for children, Norman Lamb said:
 
“This is a disgrace. The Government has implemented these new regulations without making sure that they will actually work on the ground.
 
“When top surgeons have already been CRB checked, it’s madness to restrict them to one hospital when they are needed all around the country.
 
“Protecting children must always be a top priority, but the situation has descended into complete farce with potentially dire consequences for patients and NHS staff.
 
“Ministers have buried their heads in the sand despite mounting evidence of how badly flawed this system is.
 
“We need a simple but effective system to protect our children. Once you’re CRB checked for one Trust, that should be enough to mean you can work in any hospital.”

“Banks are failing to meet their lending commitments, starving businesses of capital needed for investment,” said the Liberal Democrat Shadow Business Secretary.

Commenting on today’s figures from the ONS showing that investment by British businesses was 24.1% lower at the end of 2009 than at the start, the worst decline since records began, John Thurso said:

“This dramatic slump in business investment bodes ill for economic recovery.

“Banks are failing to meet their lending commitments, starving businesses of capital needed for investment.

“The Government needs to get a grip and make sure the banks’ lending agreements are more concrete and better policed so that recovery doesn’t peter out.”

“The abolition of exit checks by Conservative and Labour Governments means that we can only guess at the numbers coming in and out,” said the Liberal Democrat Shadow Home Secretary.

Commenting on today’s Office for National Statistics migration figures, Chris Huhne said:

“Public confidence and trust in the migration system has been shattered by decades of mismanagement.

“The abolition of exit checks by Conservative and Labour Governments means that we can only guess at the numbers coming in and out.

“People over-staying on short-term visas are probably the biggest source of illegal immigration and we still cannot say whether they are leaving when they are meant to do so.

“Exit checks must be reintroduced immediately.”

“RBS rewarding individual bankers is like a football team paying their striker for scoring when they’ve just been relegated,” said the Liberal Democrat Shadow Chancellor.

Commenting on the announcement of RBS’ losses and bonus pool, Vince Cable said:

“It’s hard to understand why £1.3bn is being paid out in bonuses when RBS continues to make losses.

“RBS rewarding individual bankers is like a football team paying their striker for scoring when they’ve just been relegated.  

“While it is good news that RBS is meeting its mortgage lending target, its lending to business has fallen.
 
“The Government has to get a grip and explain how it will exercise its 84% shareholding in RBS to benefit the taxpayer. At present we are seeing very little. Part nationalised banks are for lending, not bonuses.

“Stephen Hester seems to think that his only goal is to push up the share price. But RBS has made a commitment to support recovery by ensuring that viable businesses are not starved of capital.  If RBS doesn’t lend to businesses they will go bust and people will lose their jobs.

“The lending agreements for 2011 need to be more concrete, long term and better policed.”

“Liberal Democrats will change the rules so that fuel bills reflect fuel costs and consumers are not ripped off again and again,” said the Liberal Democrat Shadow Energy and Climate Change Secretary.

Commenting on the huge increase in profits announced by British Gas, Simon Hughes said:

“These massive profits show that the energy companies are out of control and their regulator is out of action.
 
“The six big beasts of the energy jungle must be tamed immediately – to stop their predatory activities which are so dangerous to the public.
 
“Liberal Democrats will change the rules so that fuel bills reflect fuel costs and consumers are not ripped off again and again.”

  5.53.51pm GMT Tue 23rd Feb 2010

The European Commission must accelerate progress on stripping away unnecessary red tape for small businesses which is seriously hampering efforts to beat the recession, says Midlands Euro MP Liz Lynne.

The LibDem MEP for Birmingham and the West Midlands region, who is also Vice President of the Employment and Social Affairs Committee, met campaigners from the Federation of Small Business and the European Small Business Alliance at the European Parliament in Brussels today.

In January 2007, the Commission launched a far-reaching Action Programme to cut the administrative burden of red tape on European businesses by 25 per cent by 2012. But despite warm words progress on actually scrapping unnecessary or over-complicated regulations has been painfully slow. The overall cost of administrative burden on businesses in the EU is estimated at 123.8 billion Euros or 3.5% of GDP.

Speaking after the meeting today, Liz Lynne said: “Red tape is always a burden but in a recession it can be the difference between staying afloat or bankruptcy for small firms in particular……… Full story from Liz Lynne’s website @ http://bit.ly/dB5cRg

Express & Star 23 Feb 10: The YamYam 23 Feb 2010 

A bus is to travel between two West Midland hospitals after patients demanded improvements to transport links.

The new 549 service will ferry passengers between Walsall Manor Hospital and New Cross Hospital in Wolverhampton.

It is in response to concerns by patients and families. The service will be run by commercial operator Midland from St Paul’s Street in Walsall via the hospitals, then on to Wolverhampton city centre. The move comes after talks with West Midlands Passenger Transport Authority, Centro.

The half-hourly service will start on Monday and travel via Bentley and Wednesfield.

Extra Midland buses will be introduced to cover the route, which will operate Mondays to Saturdays between 8am and 6pm………… Full story @ http://bit.ly/akkXds

“The idea of a bank which is still propped up by taxpayers paying out over a billion in bonuses is offensive,” said the Liberal Democrat Shadow Scotland Secretary.

Commenting on reports that RBS is set to pay out over £1bn in bonuses despite expectations of poor performance to be announced tomorrow, Alistair Carmichael said:

“The idea of a bank which is still propped up by taxpayers paying out over a billion in bonuses is offensive. There should be no rewards for failure.

“With people across the country having to tighten their belts, bankers are living on another planet if they think they deserve millions in bonuses.

“RBS is effectively owned by the public. If Gordon Brown really believed in fairness he would intervene to stop these bonuses going ahead.”

“Slashing spending now could push the economy back into recession and inflict further structural damage on the UK,” said the Liberal Democrat Shadow Chancellor.Commenting on George Osborne’s Mais Lecture, Vince Cable said:

“Osborne’s latest economic commentary shows just how out his depth he is when it comes to the important economic issues.
 
“Slashing spending now could push the economy back into recession and inflict further structural damage on the UK that will make it harder to sustain our credit rating.
 
“He is at odds with his leader on when cuts should come and fails to appreciate that what the markets are looking for is a credible plan to reduce the deficit, not a willingness to slash regardless of economic conditions.
 
“In the current climate it is essential that decisions about the speed and timing of tackling the deficit are based on the state of the economy, not political dogma.”

Energy firms would have to print the amount of profit they make on every fuel bill under an amendment to the Energy Bill tabled by the Liberal Democrats to be debated by MPs today.

The amendment is one of a series of proposals tabled by the Liberal Democrats to improve consumer rights.

Energy firms would be prevented from exercising a veto over regulatory changes to their operating licences under a further amendment to be debated as the Bill reaches the end of its passage in the House of Commons.

Commenting ahead of the debate, Liberal Democrat Shadow Energy and Climate Change Secretary, Simon Hughes said:

“Customers should have a right to know how much of the bills they pay end up in energy firms’ coffers.

“Both Labour and the Tories talk a lot about the need for people to make informed choices. Today is a chance to show they mean it.

“It’s unacceptable that energy giants have so much control over the body supposed to police them.

“These simple steps would lead to fairer fuel bills through greater transparency and much-needed regulation.”

The dust has now settled on Walsall Council’s marathon 5 hour Budget meeting which concentrated minds on Council Tax and Council Tax related issues as they effect Walsall residents over the coming tax year 2010/11.

At the end of the session, Tory Councillors used their majority on the council to resist any opposition amendments and vote through their trend busting 3.9% increase.

The way in which the night unfolded showed quite clearly to anyone watching, that as the General Election approaches, clear divisions in approach between the parties are beginning to appear.

Labour’s “same old - same old” dogged defence of the Government showed clearly that after 13 years of absolute power at Westminster they have finally run out of ideas.

To the Tories, the delivery of local services is a business with council tax payers viewed as customers. As in any business there are casualties. Those sections of the business which can’t be made to “pay their way” must go, and will go. This was made quite clear within the realms of Leisure, Culture and Community where the thoughts of the portfolio holder emerged for the first time. These services must be delivered at no cost. This must send a chill for all those who use these facilities in Walsall.

So, where do we the Liberal Democrats stand on Public Services? For a start we don’t hold the Tory view that the residents of Walsall are “customers”. Nor do we see you as voting fodder as Labour appears to view you.

As Liberal Democrats we see the delivery of public services as a partnership with residents very much viewed as equal partners.

Whatever mess successive Labour and Tory Governments have got us into we are all in it together, and we should all be part of the solution. Nothing can be seen in isolation. Unlike the Tories who view everything on a cost basis, Liberal Democrats believe that services come from a number of providers, each one interacting with each other.

You may feel that right now you don’t need some of those services, but as sure as time itself, there are going to be times when you will need them, and you should be sure that when you do , those services are there. 

In the words of the song, “You don’t know what you’ve got till its gone. It ain’t paradise, put up a parking lot!”

“Instead of chasing headlines, the Government needs to show how it intends to improve care,” said the Liberal Democrat Shadow Health Secretary.

Commenting on today’s report by the Royal College of Nursing which highlights the role of specialist nurses, Norman Lamb said:
 
“There is a real danger that the NHS will respond to the financial crisis by taking a slash and burn approach to its essential staff and services that make a real difference to patients with chronic conditions. This is a false economy and will be devastating for patient care.
 
“Cuts are already taking place in marked contrast to the Prime Minister’s commitment for cancer patients to get personal support at home from specialist nurses.

“Instead of chasing headlines, the Government needs to show how it intends to improve care.”

“Decisions of when to cut Government spending must be based on economic principles not political games,” said the Liberal Democrat Shadow Chancellor.

Responding to the IMF study and its assertion that the weakness of growth in the British economy means that tax increases and spending cuts should be delayed until next year but that action to reduce the deficit is inevitable, Vince Cable said:

“This is a clear endorsement of the Liberal Democrat approach to the deficit and the re-privatisation of the state owned banks.
 
“Decisions of when to cut Government spending must be based on economic principles not political games.
 
“Both the public and the markets have a right to know how the parties plan to tackle the deficit, but gung-ho spending cuts while the economy is barely recovering is simply reckless.

“While Labour buries its head in the sand and the Tories change position according to the prevailing wind, only the Liberal Democrats have produced a credible and coherent plan for dealing with the deficit. 
 
“The Tories must also realise that the taxpayer will have to have a stake in the state owned banks for a considerable period of time if we are to get good value for money when they are re-privatised.”

“Only the Liberal Democrats are committed to giving all schools the extra money they need to cut class sizes and provide children who are struggling with individual support,” said the Liberal Democrat Shadow Schools Secretary.

Commenting on the Government’s ‘chain schools’ announcement, David Laws said:

“This is another top-down gimmick from a tired Government desperate to divert attention from its failure to raise standards in our schools.

“New providers can help to turn around long-term failing schools, but do we really want Ed Balls to be handpicking all 500 of them?

“Only the Liberal Democrats are committed to giving all schools the extra money they need to cut class sizes and provide children who are struggling with individual support.

“We will make sure all schools have the freedom to provide an excellent standard of education, without the constant interference of Whitehall politicians.”

“Airbrushing has a really damaging impact on people’s self-esteem and that’s why we’ve called for a labelling system,” said the Liberal Democrat MP.

Commenting on today’s report from the Royal College of Psychiatrists calling for airbrushed images to be ‘kitemarked’, Jo Swinson said:
 
“The Royal College of Psychiatrists makes it crystal clear that airbrushing plays a harmful role when it comes to negative body image and eating disorders.
 
“Airbrushing has a really damaging impact on people’s self-esteem and that’s why we’ve called for a labelling system.
 
“Making sure children are taught to be media-savvy and getting ads which feature unrealistic, unattainable images to have a kitemark will be a real step forward.

“I’m meeting with the Advertising Standards Authority today to press these issues.”

“Energy firms should be forced to show how much profit they make on every pound they charge,” said the Liberal Democrat Shadow Energy and Climate Change Secretary.

Commenting on Ofgem figures showing that energy companies are making £105 profit per customer, a 40% increase in the last three months, Simon Hughes said:

“Energy companies clobbered households even as they struggled through the cold snap.

“Cynical price cuts now won’t disguise bumper profits made on the back of grossly unfair fuel bills.

“Energy firms should be forced to show how much profit they make on every pound they charge at the bottom of every fuel bill.”

Liberal Democrat Shadow Chancellor, Vince Cable today set out the Liberal Democrat plan for the banking sector

In his speech, Vince Cable:

• Confirmed that the Liberal Democrats are not anti bank or anti banker.
• Stated that his day one, hour one objective as Chancellor would be to devise a fresh and consistent mandate for the nationalised and semi nationalised banks.
• Argued that RBS and Lloyds are key to supporting the British economy and are currently falling well short of their lending agreements.
• Challenged Alistair Darling to give a full public account of these agreements on their respective anniversaries.
• Reiterated the Liberal Democrat commitment to splitting up the banks, unilaterally if necessary.
• Argued that so long as Northern Rock was re-mutualised in such a way to guarantee that it would continue to repay the Government, there is no reason – at least in principle – why it could not do so as a Building Society

The full text of the speech is below:

I want today to outline the Liberal Democrat plan for the banking sector, in the light of recent developments. These ideas build on those which I set out in our New Deal for the City, before the banking crisis broke, and subsequently elaborated in a speech to the Stock Exchange last July.

There has been a massive heart attack in the banking system. Some banks appear not to realise that they had a near-death experience and have been kept alive by government intervention. A cumulative total of 3 trillion pounds – twice UK GDP – has been provided in guarantees and support of various kinds.

I have said some harsh things about the banks in the past – going back a decade or more – warning that their lifestyle was dangerously unhealthy: arguing against misguided demutualisation; irresponsible mortgage and consumer lending; and Government and industry failure to grasp the central logic of the Cruickshank Report: that banks cannot expect to preserve unfettered profit maximisation and growth when they depend on a taxpayers’ guarantee of liquidity and solvency. But I haven’t come here today to rehash the past, claim to be a new Nostradamus, allocate blame or give a sermon. The Liberal Democrats are not anti-bank or anti-banker. We recognise that some banks and bankers emerge with credit from this crisis – HSBC, Standard Chartered, the Co-op Bank and some, but not all, mutuals led by Nationwide. We also recognise that banks have a key role as the heart of a capitalist economy transforming savings into loans and managing financial transactions with minimum friction and cost. I start from where we are and set out where I, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, would go from here.

Let me start with a very basic question: why do banks exist and why did governments, including ours, feel it had to bail them out, as opposed to merely rescuing the deposits of savers? Modern economies depend on financial intermediaries to channel our savings to productive use. One of the key transmission mechanisms is bank lending to companies to finance their working capital and expansion. Some cash rich companies don’t need banks; big companies can utilise capital markets; and equity also has to be found, too. But a breakdown in lending – a credit crunch – threatens the business sector as a whole, especially small business.

A collapse has been averted. But there is still a lending crisis. Evidence from the Bank of England and anecdotal evidence from firms point toward restriction in bank lending to solvent, profitable, companies. In December lending to British business outside of real estate was 16.2% lower than a year earlier. Last week the Institute of Directors highlighted that 6 out of 10 companies were being starved of capital. There is also evidence of a sharp rise in the cost of lending seen most notably in rising bank charges, arrangement fees and security being required from small business clients. The Federation of Small Business and the UK Chamber of Commerce confirm this in detailed reports from the front line. There is some reduced demand from business but that is only part of the problem. Loans are being curtailed by banks in an attempt to shore up their balance sheets and to reduce their risk profile.

Banks have two responses. One is to deny the facts. They insist that they are falling over backwards to help their business customers despite all the mass of evidence to the contrary. The other is to attribute responsibility to government and the regulators for insisting on their holding more reserve capital and for demanding more responsible, less risky, lending practices. Most small and medium-sized businesses however never indulged in the overleveraged excesses seen in the domestic property market or by major commercial property developers. The problem with the banks’ argument is that there is a fallacy of composition. Moreover, restrictions on lending to sound companies by all banks is preventing a sustained economic recovery and thereby compounding the risk of growing bad debts about which banks are concerned. Behaviour which appears sensible to individual banks is disastrous when pursued collectively. And, several leading banks are nationalised and semi-nationalised and, for them, reserve capital is largely irrelevant; they cannot go bust.

Primary responsibility lies, therefore, with government. At present they are relying on a complex array of loan guarantee schemes, which the Tories also favour. But these schemes are proving largely ineffectual, bureaucratic and difficult for firms to access. The residual private sector risk remains a barrier to new lending. Other indirect approaches like quantitative easing improve the capacity to lend but are not generating new lending either. While quantitative easing was an important tool in heading off deflation it seems to have done more to inflate asset prices than stimulate productive activity.

A degree of compulsion is unavoidable. This has taken the form of lending agreements in the semi-nationalised sector. But RBS and Lloyds are falling well short of their legally binding agreements. Bank managers are reported to be playing all kinds of games to tick the boxes without engaging seriously with smaller commercial clients. There are far too many reports for comfort that rich private clients are having their arms twisted to borrow while genuine entrepreneurs are given a wide berth. On the anniversary of the RBS lending agreement this Friday 26th February, and for Lloyds on 7th March I challenge Alistair Darling to give a full, public account of what has happened under these legally binding agreements.

Now that UKFI has finally acknowledged that the semi-nationalised banks will be in public ownership for at least five years, it is time to drop the pretence that a rapid return to private ownership requires a pumping up of the share price on the back of conservative reserve requirements and business lending practices. What is needed is a fresh and consistent mandate for those banks and this would be my day one, hour one objective as Chancellor. I would insist that the banks support recovery by ensuring that viable businesses are not starved of capital. The lending agreements have to be more concrete, long term and better policed. These banks can be tools of government policy securing and maintaining capital to good, solvent small and medium sized businesses that are vital to our economic recovery. Put simply: RBS and Lloyds are key to supporting the British economy.

There is another issue to clarify in the mandate. UK banks are guaranteed by the British taxpayer or have been bailed out by the British government. Yet several, notably RBS, see themselves as global banks catering to global clients. This divergence of interests came to the fore in the Kraft takeover of Cadbury which RBS helped to finance. In principle there is nothing wrong with takeovers (though research tends to suggest that they typically destroy rather than create value), nor with foreign ownership. But as a UK nationalised bank RBS has a primary duty to us, the British taxpayer. We are the shareholders. It is difficult to see how UK PLC was being served by the financing of the Kraft takeover, let alone supporting dodgy Russian oligarchs. Billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money was ploughed into RBS in particular to support British business, not attack it.

This Labour Government has failed to face up to the challenge posed by the Governor of the Bank of England: that if a bank (or other institution) is too big to fail it is too big. One approach is to make it easier for big institutions to fail through resolution powers such that large and complex financial institutions can be wound down in an orderly manner. However even this is inadequate.

The Liberal Democrats are committed to splitting up the banks. But we have an open mind on the mechanisms involved. The current Chancellor of the Exchequer has argued that separation is technically difficult if not impossible. The big banks argue the opposite case and point out that they have achieved a separation voluntarily. The regulator, the FSA, implies that the same aim can be achieved by stealth, through differential capital adequacy requirements. The essential point is that within a realistic time frame the British taxpayer has to be totally disengaged from the risks involved in global investment banking. For existing publicly owned institutions, RBS especially and Lloyds, they should be broken up before they are returned to private ownership.

Breaking up the existing big banks removes large scale systemic risk; banks become small enough to fail; and more competition is restored. One version of this argument is that investment banks should be split off from what is called ‘utility’ banking: a modern version of Glass-Steagall. President Obama is pressing ahead in the US. It is time to do the same here in the UK. Various counter arguments are advanced in retaliation. It is said that small banks (like Northern Rock) as well as big banks (like RBS) collapsed in the latest crisis: true. Also that risk is not necessarily correlated with structure: some investment banking is low risk; some small business and mortgage lending is high risk. Also true. But size matters: Barclays Capital openly aim to be the world’s largest investment bank. The British taxpayer will be left footing the bill for any future collapse. This is wholly unacceptable. It is privatising profits and nationalising losses all over again.

The key issue for the UK is whether to proceed unilaterally or wait for broader agreement. The priority must and should be to make the UK safe. And if necessary that means proceeding unilaterally. Until the process of breaking up the banks is complete, we believe that banks should pay an insurance premium – in the form of a 10% levy on supplementary profits for registered banks in the UK (excluding mutuals). This levy would be to cover counter party risk as opposed to depositor protection, covered under existing arrangements. There is a growing consensus that such an insurance levy is right.

I proceed to another issue which has dominated the headlines: bonuses. This week we will be hearing more on this as RBS and Lloyds post their profits and formally announce details of their remuneration packages. Just as politicians were very slow to grasp the public reaction to duck islands, moats and house ‘flipping’, the financial community has been extraordinarily obtuse in failing to appreciate why the public is so angry about bankers’ bonuses. Many seem to have forgotten that they were bailed out by the taxpayer and would be without a job were it not for the outlay of this public money. To pay themselves way beyond the rewards which would normally accrue to risk taking entrepreneurs outside the City let alone workers on average incomes is insensitive at best and crass at worst. They have to realise they have a role in society as well as a role in business. And we know both from experience that the bonus culture encouraged risk taking which precipitated the financial meltdown. So why are we here again? More depressing is the fact that bonus culture has now infected other sectors of the economy, most notably, the public sector.

There is a role for regulation as laid out a year ago by Lord Turner in his wide ranging report. The key principle is that any bonuses should be paid in shares, not cash, fully redeemable only after a minimum of three years, so as to discourage reckless, short-term, gambling behaviour which potentially damages financial institutions. Under this principle, signed up to at the G20, remuneration policy of regulated financial institutions must be approved by the FSA as a check to ensure that short term risks are not being incentivised that may affect long term stability. It is far from clear that any such discipline is currently being applied. The Turner principles remain theoretical. Even in the publicly owned banks bonuses can be cashed after a few weeks.

I suggest that the FSA should make publicly available the outcome of assessments made of banks’ remuneration policy and action taken to meet the Turner principles. Increasing capital requirements could be one tool to enforce this but a fine would send a more powerful message and would provide greater transparency. It should start with the big institutions which incubate systemic risk, not the small fry. It is not clear why there is foot dragging at present over this basic reform and why the banks are still being allowed to swim around in large bonus pools.

This government has adopted a temporary tax – to the end of next month – on bonus pools. Despite the many potentially straightforward ways of avoiding the tax, most banks appear to have decided to pay up rather than modify their behaviour and have no doubt calculated that a one-off windfall tax of this kind will head off more intrusive controls on bonuses. And so the bonus problem remains. That’s why the Liberal Democrat levy on profits is necessary and is a simpler and more secure system that the one currently in place.

It is impossible to see how large bonuses can be justified for senior executives in the public sector banks, when their banks are losing money, depend on the taxpayer and are failing to meet their legally binding lending agreements. We should follow the Swedish example and attempt to eliminate them altogether. Performance related pay would have left them on the breadline not queuing up for million pound bonuses. UKFI has direct responsibility and it should exercise it, obviously showing an understanding of the need for qualified staff as well as for restraint. But the understanding should be based on the clear assumption any bonuses for specialist staff are exceptional and temporary until the banks are broken up.

For banks in general, transparency is a minimum requirement. All highly paid staff in regulated institutions with a compensation package in excess of the Prime Minister’s £200,000 should publish details of their remuneration. They would also have to declare whether they are normally resident and domiciled in the UK for tax purposes. A voluntary code along the lines recommended by Walker is pointless. Unless disclosure is mandatory it won’t happen.

But regulators can’t and shouldn’t try to manipulate pay like 1970s incomes policy. Progressive taxation has to address the issue of fairness in rewards. The current government’s flag waving approach to top tax rates is not a serious approach to this problem. As long as there are vast disparities between top tax rates in earned income and capital gains, currently 50% versus 18%, any half competent tax accountant will try to structure future compensation to exploit it. There is little genuine economic difference between income and capital gains, and no benefit in a tax system that so clearly encourages capital gains to be dressed up as income. Taxing income and capital gains at the same rate is the only way to deal with this insidious issue.

The semi-nationalised banks (and nationalised Northern Rock) sit an uneasy, semi-competitive, relationship with private banks and mutuals. One issue, as yet unresolved, is the future of the publicly owned banks. While the Liberal Democrats have no fundamental ideological opposition to selling the taxpayer stakes in the nationalised and semi nationalised banks – indeed we support re-privatisation – there is no hurry and every reason to show patience. UKFI now believes that it will be a state shareholder for at least five years. Experience in Korea, Sweden, Israel and in the US would lead us to believe that the optimal time frame for disposal of nationalised or semi-nationalised assets is probably close to 10 years. That is the time needed to sort out and restructure banks, manage bad assets and restore normal, safe lending. That is why Mr Osborne’s proposal for a quick sell off of bank shares to retail buyers is such a bad idea. It almost guarantees that the taxpayer will not get value for money.

Sweden still owns almost 20% of a bank that it bailed out in the early 1990s (Nordea). We should not rule out the taxpayer taking interests in Northern Rock, Lloyds and RBS for similarly long periods. I can also see a long term role for some state banking, operating on the operationally independent lines of National Savings & Investment to serve the millions marginalised by the main banks, perhaps located in the Post Office Network.

The government’s obsession with minimising the extent and length of public ownership was a driver behind the Asset Protection Scheme (like its American cousin TARP). We argued that it was a misconceived and dangerous initiative. It provides insurance for ‘bad’ loans but with a huge, open ended, risk with the taxpayer once the banks have absorbed the first £60bn of any loss (out of an estimated £300bn). I described the APS last February as a ‘massive fraud on the taxpayer’. I was accused of over-dramatising the problem. But we recently learnt that for the second time in a decade the Permanent Secretary to the Treasury was worried enough to warn the Chancellor in writing about taking on public liability for toxic loans which may have involved fraud and corruption. Any potential privatisation has to cover not just the recapitalisation cost but any losses accruing from the APS. And if banks do come back to the government for more help it should be in the form of ordinary shares, not APS.

The current confused structure of the banks, with a large chunk in the public sector, provides a valuable opportunity to recast it in a way that serves the long term interests of the UK economy. Two themes should be competition and diversity.

A decade ago, Cruickshank was highly critical of the lack of competition in bank lending – for business lending particularly – and there is now even less. There is an opportunity to widen choice by issuing new banking licenses and two or three serious new operators are entering the market. Another opportunity is provided by the break up of the semi-nationalised RBS and Lloyds. The European Union has already mandated a carving up of the retail network.

There is a case for a more varied banking ecology. Those mutuals which resisted the – disastrous – lure of conversion continue to provide a different and, for many, more attractive business model without the pressures to produce shareholder returns. A strong case is being made for transferring nationalised Northern Rock back into a mutual. Our objection has been that mutualisation of the nationalised banks does not produce the return of cash to the taxpayer, but we must remember Northern Rock is in a very different situation to Lloyds and RBS. £23bn of Government money has been pumped into Northern Rock vastly in excess of its market worth even at the height of the credit boom. There is no way this money will ever be recouped purely from a re-flotation. As long as the Rock was re-mutualised in such a way to guarantee that it would continue to repay the Government, there is no reason – at least in principle – why it could not do this as a Building Society.

Diversity does not apply solely to ownership structures. The inability of broadly based banks to meet (or even understand) the needs of business, particularly new ventures, and the lack of any mechanism for long term infrastructure funding, particularly with the problems being encountered with PFI, suggest the need for specialist banking institutions. The break up and restructuring of the banks, particularly in the semi-nationalised sector, provides an opportunity to launch and capitalise a range of institutions: another reason for avoiding a quick sell off.

The City is almost by definition, a cross border industry. While Britain can try to regulate separately, many financial services activities require global – or EU – regulation. Capital adequacy rules are global with specific EU legislative underpinning. The Liberal Democrats favour a cooperative approach to regulation so as to make regulation fully effective and to reduce arbitrage.

There is a danger however that a reasonable concern about ‘level playing fields’ would prevent action necessary to safeguard banks at a national level. The UK has an exceptionally big banking sector in relation to the economy and therefore relatively large systemic risks. There are areas – like regulation of bonuses, the break-up of banks and an insurance levy – where global agreement is desirable but unlikely to happen within the foreseeable future. Unilateral action must therefore be better than no action at all.

A multilateral approach is, obviously, optimal. And we need to be alert to the weasel words of politicians and bankers who promote inaction in the name of multilateralism. I recall that in the dark days of the Cold War the Russians usually signalled a new twist in the arms race by announcing a commitment to ‘general and complete disarmament’ which they knew no-one else would accept. I hope I am not being too cynical in believing that much of the rhetoric about new global rules is so much camouflage for keeping the unstable, dangerous, status quo. Sensible and safe bank regulation has to begin, like charity, at home. And I say that as someone who has preached, and written about, the importance of multilateral trade rules for decades.

The financial services industry is an important feature of the UK economy. The City is at the heart of it. But the financial crisis must make us look critically at its contribution. There are considerable benefits, but, as we have now discovered, major systemic risks which can spill over into the rest of the economy. It is the job of policy makers, and specifically regulation, to cut the risks relative to the benefits. And the Liberal Democrats are committed to doing so.

Thank you.

Liberal Democrats on Walsall Council will move an amendment to the Budget for 2010/11 at tonight’s Full Council meeting, which if agreed, would keep Willenhall Leisure Centre open in the coming year.

Speaking after a Liberal Democrat Group Meeting on Friday Lib Dem Group Leader Ian Shires said ” If Willenhall’s nine councillors are to rise to the challenge laid down by the Leader of the Council to come up with solutions to reduce the subsidy to Willenhall Leisure Centre, then we need to see a commitment from the Tories to fund our Leisure Centre to the end of the next financial year.

“If there is no such commitment, then no matter what Willenhall Councillors come up with the Leisure Centre will have to close as there is no provision for it past the six month reprieve agreed by the Tories at cabinet a couple of weeks ago” said Ian.

Plans to reduce the need for subsidy in line with other leisure centres will be put to a meeting in March. Ideas for the medium to long term future of the centre through a Community Involvement Company are also being explored.

The BBC website carries a story today that shows just how out of touch the Conservatives are with ordinary people.

The BBC have reported that senior Conservative MP, Sir Nicholas Winterton has angrily denounced plans to cut down on the amount of first-class travel by MP’s, saying that he needs “quiet” and privacy to work.

The veteran Conservative MP said there was a “totally different type of people” in standard-class train carriages.He also said it was a “grotesque injustice” that the expenses system had been “misrepresented” by the media.

A Conservative spokesman said Sir Nicholas’s remarks were “the out-of-touch views of a soon-to-retire backbench MP”.

Sir Nicholas and MP wife Ann Winterton, who is also standing down, faced criticism for claiming rent of £20,000 a year on a flat they transferred to a family trust after paying off the mortgage.

Liberal Democrat Shadow Transport Secretary, Norman Baker said the comments showed how out of the touch the Conservatives were.

He told Radio 5 live:

“Dig into the Conservative Party and they haven’t changed

 “They still think they are a class apart, they still think they are privileged, they resent the idea that they should be subject to the same controls as everybody else.”

Norman Baker said there were occasions when he travelled first class when the layout of seats meant it was not possible to work in standard class but he would always have to justify doing so.

The following article was written by the Liberal Democrat Deputy Leader, Vince Cable, and originally appeared in today’s Mail on Sunday:

We keep hearing a smooth soundbite –  that we live in something called a ‘broken society’. Polls suggest that a majority of people agree. I just don’t believe it.

To be sure, there are occasional well-publicised horrors: ghastly crimes involving children; some estates where drug dealers terrorise the local population; some elderly or ill people who are isolated and neglected; some chaotic families with no stable relationships or discipline.

But I simply do not accept that these problems are typical. My own experience as a constituency MP is that the vast majority of people are law-abiding, live in stable relationships, care for their families and participate in their local communities.

Last week I attended a party organised by a voluntary group that helps the elderly and disabled by giving them lifts to shopping centres or appointments. Numerous people spend their spare time raising money for many charities.

Come the summer there will be fetes and carnivals, local schools have flourishing parent-teacher associations, hospitals have fundraising Friends, the Scout movement is growing and I notice that many local churches are increasingly populated by young families.

At weekends, parks and open spaces are full of sports clubs. Art, theatre and music societies are well supported. Most neighbourhoods have resident associations that kick up a fuss over planning and parking matters. Hardly evidence of a ‘broken society’.

I will be criticised for quoting experiences from a ‘middle class’, prosperous, suburban area. But most British people consider themselves ‘middle class’. 

Many schools will be holding fetes and events this summer

And while my Twickenham constituency has above average incomes and well above average levels of education, the examples I have given of voluntary work and community activity apply elsewhere – in gritty industrial areas as well as prosperous suburbs or countryside.

I am also struck by the fact that it is among the modest semi-detached and terrace houses and the former council estates that there is the greatest commitment to the network of volunteer drivers, the Scouts’ gang show and the St George’s Day parade.

There is a vast reservoir of civic pride and community spirit and it is insulting to say that these people belong to a ‘broken society’.

   So what on earth is meant by a ‘broken society’? Part of it is fear and loathing of the so-called ‘underclass’: the world of ‘sink estates’ supposedly populated by feckless, teenage single mothers on benefits; children who are out of control; rampant crime; drug addicts and alcoholics. Some of these problems undoubtedly exist but exaggerated fear of an underclass is nothing new.

Respectable Victorians were outraged by gin palaces and prostitution among the ‘undeserving poor’. There is undoubtedly a modern equivalent of that underclass and there is a depressing tendency, despite all the Government money thrown at the problem, for the problems of one generation to be passed on to the next.

Mothers who smoke tend to produce children who smoke. Homes without books produce children with poor reading skills. Sex abuse often stems from childhood experience.

The lazy assumption is that the position is hopeless; nothing can be done; society, or at least part of it, is broken beyond repair. In fact there are many examples of people overcoming their hardships.

We could talk about a ‘broken society’ if there were serious evidence that order and respect for the law were breaking down and crime was getting out of control. There isn’t.

Crime statistics can be confusing, not least because there are two separate sources based on crimes reported to the police and  surveys of the public. They often contradict each other. In the coming General Election these figures will be bandied about with little respect for the truth.

What we do know is that many of the crimes that worry people most – robbery, burglary, assaults, murder – are declining. My local police superintendent scratches his head in bafflement when all the evidence locally points to falling crime yet people’s fear of crime is growing. It is fed mainly by reports in the media of gun and knife crime that they will never encounter.

The other ‘evidence’ for a ‘broken society’ is teenage pregnancy. This is not a new problem. In the Sixties my teenage friends ran the gauntlet of getting ‘in the family way’ and some were caught out.

This was widely attributed to a moral collapse into the ‘permissive society’, the equivalent of today’s ‘broken society’.

What I dislike most about the ‘broken society’ message is that it distorts the facts for political advantage. Far worse, it breeds cynicism and despair in our basically decent and healthy society.

Britain is not broken. We need leaders to lift us up, not run us down.

Shortly after the Prime Minister’s keynote earlier today, the Leader of the Liberal Democrats, Nick Clegg today said that there had been a “total failure to make Britain fairer”. 

Nick Clegg told the BBC:

“Fairness is something real and what I think will make people feel very angry is to hear Gordon Brown talk about delivering fairness when he’s failed to do so. 

“What does he have to say to the million youngsters who are without a job, what does he have to say to the pensioners who can’t even heat their own homes… to say to the many families in this country who are struggling simply to pay to put a warm meal on their table every day? 

“He has failed to deliver fairness, he doesn’t deserve a future as the prime minister of this country.” 

Nick Clegg also told Sky New that Gordon Brown’s decision to focus on fairness in the Labour election campaign was “a gratuitous insult” because Labour has “so spectacularly failed to deliver on it.”

Nick Clegg added that he welcomes a debate on fairness in the election campaign and said of Mr Brown,

“I don’t know what parallel universe he lives in.”

“Having heard what Gordon brown has to say, having heard their new slogan my reaction is this: we don’t need a fantasy slogan to see what the future would look under Gordon brown because we have the past 12 years…the truth is Gordon Brown has failed,”

On the Liberal Democrats’ prospects, Nick Clegg said the party is “being recognised as the party that can deliver real change, real fairness, by people who got sick of the tweedle dum tweedle dee politics of Labour and the Conservatives.”

“They have no understanding of the economy they are aspiring to run,” said the Liberal Democrat Shadow Chancellor.

Commenting on George Osborne’s announcement in the Sunday Times of a “people’s bonus” plan, Vince Cable said:

“Dangling this prospect, when UKFI has said it will take at least 5 years before the likes of RBS are back in private hands, is Tory electioneering at its most cynical.

“They have no understanding of the economy they are aspiring to run.

“The nationalised and semi nationalised banks should be re-privatised when the conditions are right to maximise tax payer return. Selling shares off at a discounted rate will not achieve this.

“These banks should be set the concrete objective of ensuring lending to sound small and medium sized businesses who are the drivers of our economic recovery.

“Actively encouraging people on very low incomes to invest in a volatile share market beggars belief and shows just how removed the Tories are from everyday reality.

“A young couple on low income is more concerned with putting food on the table than speculating on the stock market.

“If the Tories were actually committed to helping people on they would be trying to instil fairness into the tax system instead of coming up with this ill conceived attempt to buy their vote.”

“We now desperately need to see a judicial inquiry into all aspects of the British Government’s alleged involvement in torture,” said the Liberal Democrat Shadow Foreign Secretary.

Commenting on the news that the Metropolitan Police are investigating a further case of alleged involvement in torture by UK security services, Edward Davey said:
 
“The allegations of the UK’s complicity in torture are rapidly reaching crisis point.

“Police investigations into individual cases are welcome and necessary. But it is becoming increasingly clear that these cases can no longer be seen as isolated incidents. There have been a series of allegations which paint a picture of complicity in torture.

“We now desperately need to see a judicial inquiry into all aspects of the British Government’s alleged involvement in torture. Even former Attorney General Lord Goldsmith has backed calls for an inquiry – Gordon Brown cannot hide from this any longer.”

“This stance taken by the Tories clearly suggests that they’re rowing back from their commitment on high-speed rail,” said the Liberal Democrat Shadow Transport Secretary.

Commenting on the news that the Tories have refused Government offers to view an advanced copy of the high-speed rail white paper, Norman Baker said:

“This stance taken by the Tories clearly suggests that they’re rowing back from their commitment on high-speed rail.

“Seeing the document doesn’t commit any party to a particular line, but it is a useful way of learning what’s on the table and informs the debate.

“This peculiar decision of the Tories coupled with Osborne’s spending cuts strongly suggest that the Tories are trying to kick high-speed rail into the long grass.

“The Tories can’t be trusted with our railways.”

Walsall Council through “Street Pride” is to carry out a trial starting in April focusing on the removal of graffiti on private residential property. If the trial proves successful it is hoped that the project will become “mainsteam funded” with a dedicated budget reports Liberal Democrat councillor Ian Shires.

The trial was part of a report on “Enforcement and Private Property” which was debated at length at last night’s Communities Scrutiny and Performance Panel.

Speaking at the meeting Lib Dem councillor Ian Shires welcomed the idea and requested that the Willenhall area be considered for the focus of the trails.

He said that Willenhall LNP had allocated part of its budget to support a series of “Tidy Up Days” across Willenhall North, Short Heath and Willenhall South during the Spring and Summer but had put the plans on hold when it found out that only graffiti on public property would be removed. Graffiti on residential property would be dealt with through legislation.

“Members of Willenhall LNP thought that this would criminalise the victims of environmental crime. The whole point of Tidy Up Days is to involve the local community not to alienate people” said Ian. “These trials would enable Willenhall LNP’s Tidy Up Days to go ahead as planned” he concluded.

 Express & Star 18 Feb 10: The YamYam 18 Feb 2010

Walsall MP Bruce George is to stand down after 36 years, the Express and Star can reveal today.

Mr George, aged 67, said he had agonised over the decision for months and that he had reached his conclusion “with the very greatest reluctance and with an extremely heavy heart”.

The MP was first elected in the Walsall South constituency in February 1974, and secured a healthy 22 per cent majority of almost 8,000 at the last general election.

He has said twice since retaining his seat in 2001 that he may not stand again, and insists that this time his decision is final.

Full Story @ http://bit.ly/cOGruf

“Simply slashing spending now regardless of the economic circumstances is not only a fruitless labour but a damaging one,” said the Liberal Democrat Shadow Chancellor.

Commenting on the news that the UK’s public finances deteriorated further in January, Vince Cable said:

“This is worrying news for the state of the public finances.

“The weakness of the economy is having an inevitable impact on tax receipts.

“These figures underline the importance of having a credible plan to tackle the deficit and stimulate growth and jobs to strengthen future tax receipts.

“Simply slashing spending now regardless of the economic circumstances is not only a fruitless labour but a damaging one.

“If we cut too soon, the economy will be pushed back into recession, lowering tax revenues even further and negating the effect of the cuts.

“Only the Liberal Democrats have a clear and concise plan for dealing with the deficit and for promoting the long-term growth and security of our economy.”

“Gordon Brown’s announcement pales in comparison to Liberal Democrat plans that will invest £400m in our wind turbine manufacturing capacity,” said the Liberal Democrat Shadow Energy and Climate Change Secretary.

Commenting on the Government’s announcement of the latest £8m funding for offshore wind technology and the Prime Minister’s claim that the UK is a “global leader” in offshore wind, Simon Hughes said:

“Britain has fallen so far behind on clean energy that the Government’s boasts are rather hollow.
 
“Gordon Brown’s announcement pales in comparison to Liberal Democrat plans that will invest £400m in our wind turbine manufacturing capacity.
 
“What the North East and the country need is a real commitment to green manufacturing jobs and not shameless electioneering at the taxpayers’ expense.”

“We urgently need many more affordable homes and the quickest and cheapest way to do this is to bring hundreds of thousand of empty homes back into use,” said the Liberal Democrat Shadow Housing Minister.

Commenting on Council of Mortgage Lenders figures showing the gross mortgage lending declined by 32% in January and is at its lowest monthly total since 2000, Sarah Teather said:
 
“These figures are further proof that the economy is still extremely fragile.
 
“Despite the Government having a share in some of the country’s banks, it has failed to get them to act in the interests of the consumer.
 
“We urgently need many more affordable homes and the quickest and cheapest way to do this is to bring hundreds of thousand of empty homes back into use.”

“Climate change is a grave threat to our future as the vast majority of scientists tell us and the evidence shows,” said the Liberal Democrat Shadow Energy and Climate Change Secretary.

Commenting on the resignation of the UN’s top climate change official, Yvo de Boer, Simon Hughes said:

“Mr de Boer’s resignation is an indictment of the governments and international institutions who failed us at Copenhagen.
 
“Climate change is a grave threat to our future as the vast majority of scientists tell us and the evidence shows. Countries need to urgently respond with structures that work.

“That is why I have a called for the creation of a Climate Security Council to sit in permanent session and resolve the difficult political issues surrounding the climate crisis.”

“State funded schools should not be free to put their own spin on sex and relationship education,” says the Liberal Democrat Shadow Schools Secretary.

Commenting on an amendment to the Government’s Children, Schools and Families Bill that would allow faith schools to teach sex education ‘in a way that reflects the school’s religious character’, Liberal Democrat Shadow Schools Secretary, David Laws said:

“This is a serious and undesirable U-turn by Ed Balls when the Government’s policy on sex and relationship education is already pretty weak.

“The Government has already given an opt-out from sex and relationship education up to age 15. This looks like it will further water down the information which all young people should be entitled to before they reach the age of consent.

“State funded schools should not be free to put their own spin on sex and relationship education.

“The Government should not pander in any way either to homophobia or to those who want young people kept in the dark when they are already exposed to these issues through the media well before the age of 16.”

People everywhere have really felt the strain during Labour’s long and painful recession.

The Labour Government’s tax hikes on ordinary people on middle and low incomeshave been brutal.

Meanwhile Gordon Brown has sat idly by while millionaires dodge taxes and richbankers get huge bonuses.

People now face the prospect of paying more tax while getting less in return. No wonder so many people across Britain want a change, but that change won’t come from the Conservatives.

The Tories are funded by the same old millionaires and bankers. David Cameron’s top tax priority is lower taxes for millionaires.

Only Nick Clegg’s Liberal Democrats will deliver fairer taxes. A new tax system where the very rich pay more and ordinary people pay less.

No tax on first £10,000 earned

The Lib Dem fairer tax plan will mean that no one pays income tax on the first £10,000 they earn.

If you earn less than £10,000 a year you will pay no tax at all. This will help millions of low paid and part time workers and pensioners.

If you earn more than £10,000 then you will gain an extra £700 a year.
These tax cuts will be paid for by closing tax loopholes exploited by the very rich and the new ‘mansion tax’ on houses worth more than £2million.

Liberal Democrat Leader Nick Clegg said:

“These changes will help millions of people. Only the Liberal Democrats will deliver real change and a fairer Britain.”

Richard Burt has made a last minute plea to residents to sign a petition on the Prime Minister’s website calling for public funding to help save the National Flood Forum.

The deadline for the petition at http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/floodfunds/ is this Sunday, 21st February.

Richard, who has signed the petition said: “The National Flood Forum is a local charity and is the only organisation giving individual help and support to flood victims across the UK…….. Full Story……. http://bit.ly/bDOOuQ

Jonathan Walker B’ham Mail 17 Feb 10: The YamYam 17 Feb 2010 
 

A POWERFUL inquiry has slammed the Government for pouring money into London’s transport network and ignoring the needs of the West Midlands.

The Labour-dominated Transport Select Committee accused Ministers of diverting cash for new rail lines and stations in the region to the south east instead.

It welcomed plans to redevelop Birmingham’s New Street station, but pointed out that transport spending in London is £836 per head – more than three times the £269 per head spent in the West Midlands and the North.

And in a report published following a three-month inquiry, the committee warned that the gap is growing wider.

Spending in London has risen by 57 per cent over the past five years, and just 25 per cent in the Midlands and North.

Full Story from Birmingham Mail……. http://bit.ly/99dBCg

Liberal Democrat Shadow Health Secretary, Norman Lamb has today written to Andrew Lansley to urge him to attend Friday’s conference on social care.

Andrew Lansley is refusing to attend the cross party conference on the basis that the Government will not rule out a compulsory levy. This is despite earlier indications that he accepted that the issue of voluntary versus compulsory schemes was one of the key points to be resolved in a consensus building process.

Norman Lamb has also called for the talks to be held in the open, rather than in secret.

Commenting, Norman Lamb said:

“Social care is one of the most pressing challenges any new Government will have to deal with.

“Over the last week care for the elderly has become a political football in a most unseemly way. We must set party loyalties aside and try to get to grips with this problem. 

“I’ve written to Andrew Lansley to urge him to come to this conference.

“The care system is in crisis and many elderly people are getting inadequate care. The Liberal Democrats want efforts to achieve a cross-party agreement on social care to sort this problem out once and for all. Critically those efforts must engage the public and all those organisations involved in care for the elderly.  The Tories will be betraying older voters if they fail to take part

“I want this conference to be the start of a process which engages the public in a national debate as we seek conclusions to this most crucial priority. It should be broadcast live on the internet and people should be encouraged to send in their ideas and views.”

In a speech today, Conservative Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Spokesperson, Nick Herbert will claim that: ‘For the modern Conservative Party, embracing gay equality is neither a temporary phenomenon, nor an agenda which can be reversed.’

However, Liberal Democrat analysis of the voting record of Conservative MPs standing for re-election next year, including the Shadow Cabinet, has revealed the gulf between Nick Herbert’s words and his party’s actions when it comes to gay rights.

The voting records of current Conservative MPs who are standing again next year show that:

• One in six, voted in favour of Section 28 in 1988. A sixth voted against its repeal in 2003 including David Cameron and a third of the Shadow Cabinet

• One in ten voted against dropping the age of consent for gay men from 21 to 18 in 1994
• Almost one in five, voted against the Sexual Offences Amendment Bill in 1999 which aimed to reduce the age at which anal sex was legal from 18 to 16
• One in three voted to allow only heterosexual, married couples to adopt in 2002 including seven members of the Shadow Cabinet
• One in three voted against the Equality Act (Sexual Orientation) Regulations in March 2007 which allows the Secretary of State to make regulations defining discrimination and harassment on grounds of sexual orientation.  This included thirty-three, or a third of frontbenchers and four of the Shadow Cabinet
• The Conservative Party opposed The Equality Bill 2008-09. Nineteen members of the Shadow Cabinet joined attempts to block the bill which will introduce a single ‘public duty’ requiring all publicly-funded bodies to proactively promote equality across the board and remove barriers to fair service provision

“These people will be the hardest to help back into work when the economy recovers and risk never coming off benefits,” said the Liberal Democrat Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary.

Commenting on today’s unemployment figures, Steve Webb said:

“Record numbers of people out of work for more than a year is the Government’s dreaded landmark.
 
“These people will be the hardest to help back into work when the economy recovers and risk never coming off benefits.
 
“Ministers need to help people far sooner rather than leaving them without specialist support for over a year.
 
“These figures show why cutting spending while the economy remains fragile would be a big mistake. We need to invest in a green jobs package which will support the economy now and build our infrastructure for the long-term.”

“Improvements in social care will only come about if local authorities and the NHS can start to work more effectively together,” said the Liberal Democrat Shadow Health Secretary.

Commenting of today’s report by the Audit Commission on the social care system, Norman Lamb said:
 
“This report is further evidence of a system in crisis.  It highlights the scale of the challenges facing the social care system and the urgent need for reform.
 
“Temporary measures which only address part of the problem won’t do anything to alter the fact that we need to fundamentally rethink how we pay for social care. This won’t be possible unless everyone can start to work together in a constructive and transparent way.
 
“Improvements in social care will only come about if local authorities and the NHS can start to work more effectively together.  Labour and the Tories owe it to the people of this country to stop treating care for the elderly as a political football.”

“Patient safety should be the top priority for the NHS, not hitting targets,” said the Liberal Democrat Shadow Health Secretary.

Commenting on today’s report from a medical charity which reveals that three-quarters of NHS Trusts are endangering patients by not complying with safety alerts meant to stop fatal errors recurring, Norman Lamb said:

“These figures reveal a shocking number of hospitals that are not making basic changes to keep patients safe.
 
“The Government must admit that its obsession with politically driven targets is putting doctors and nurses under impossible pressure and patients’ lives at risk.
 
“When things go badly wrong for patients, the Liberal Democrats believe that the boards of hospital trusts must be accountable. 
 
“Patient safety should be the top priority for the NHS, not hitting targets.”

“There is a danger that inflation will stay high while growth remains low,” said the Liberal Democrat Shadow Chancellor.

Commenting on inflation rising to 3.5% in January, Vince Cable said:

“This figure is a stark reminder that despite the small growth in the economy at the end of last year we are still living in very uncertain times.

“The Bank of England’s explanation of this as a temporary blip is welcome but there is a danger that inflation will stay high while growth remains low.”

“We need to invest in a green jobs package which will support the economy now and build our infrastructure for the long-term,” said the Liberal Democrat Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary.

Commenting on today’s figures from the Office for National Statistics showing a sharp rise in underemployment during the recession, Steve Webb said:

“Ministers are guilty of playing down the impact of the recession on working people by ignoring underemployment.

“While labour market flexibility has prevented an explosion in unemployment during this recession, one in 10 people who want more hours can’t find enough work. This can have a devastating financial impact on them and their families.

“We need to invest in a green jobs package which will support the economy now and build our infrastructure for the long-term. Cutting spending while the economy remains fragile would be a big mistake.”

Liberal Democrat Leader Nick Clegg today pledged to support any legislation needed to make payback of sale profits from the taxpayer-funded second homes of MPs possible.

Nick Clegg said:

“The Liberal Democrats will support any legislation necessary to ensure that MPs pay back the profit they make on the sale of their second homes, as recommended by Sir Ian Kennedy.

“The public will expect Gordon Brown and David Cameron to make a similar commitment.

“I personally remain committed to returning to the public purse all money made from my Sheffield home since it was purchased.”

“The revelations about the activities of this hospital require an urgent investigation by the Department of Health,” said the Liberal Democrat Shadow Health Secretary.

Commenting on reports that an NHS hospital sold millions of pounds worth of hospital drugs intended for NHS use onto the export market, despite Government warnings, Norman Lamb said:
 
“To find out that an NHS Trust has been making money from potentially fatal problems in the availability of drugs beggars belief.
 
“Patients across the UK have been put at risk by the dramatic increase in the export of pharmaceuticals.
 
“The revelations about the activities of this hospital require an urgent investigation by the Department of Health.”

Funding concerns announced by Amarjit Basi, the Principle of Walsall College yesterday could have a knock-on effect on Walsall’s efforts to regenerate itself reports Liberal Democrat councillor Ian Shires.

“I think that the Council and its partners should take this early warning by Mr Basi seriously” said Ian. “The ramifications of any cuts in education could have a negative effect on the future employment prospects for Walsall residents and for the future of Walsall business.”

“Mr Basi has acted promptly to minimise the effects on students and the wider Walsall community. I think it is important that Walsall Council, Walsall Partnership and the Walsall Regeneration Company rally round to put up a united front to ensure future plans are not compromised.” 

Matt Lloyd B’ham Mail 16 Feb 10: The YamYam 16 Feb 2010 
COURSES and pupil numbers could be reduced at a Midland college if a £1.5 million funding cut goes ahead.

Amarjit Basi, principal at Walsall College, sent out the warning as the institution faces a 25 per cent budget reduction in September.

He said the cuts would lead to less courses which have helped locals get back into work in the aftermath of the recession.

Mr Basi said: “We support over 8,000 adult learners to increase their vocational skills and demand for such courses is high.

“We are now facing funding cuts which may limit out capacity to effectively increase the skills of members of the local work force.

“It is unclear how these changes will impact on our college at this stage, But we are working hard to minimise the effect on the students and communities we represent.”

Full story from Matt Lloyd Birmingham Mail 16 Feb 2010….. http://bit.ly/9cxvVs

Photo courtesy of Express & Star    

Councillors who attended last week’s meeting to look at options which could help save Willenhall Leisure Centre reported back to Willenhall Regeneration Project Reference Group (PRG) at its meeting yesterday reports Liberal Democrat councillor Ian Shires. Members of the “Friends of Willenhall Leisure Centre” attended the meeting.

Details of the plan to reduce unit costs within the three months demanded by Walsall’s Tory Cabinet were outlined as was the medium to long term option of a Community Enterprise in the form of  Community Involvement Company (CIC).

A special meeting of the Willenhall PRG was proposed in order to look at all the options in more detail but the aim will be to meet the challenge of the cabinet within the 3 month deadline.

“If the subsidy level of Willenhall Leisure Centre are reduced to the same as the other leisure centre across the borough, then the cabinet need to come up with funding to keep the centre open whilst the plan to progress to some form of community enterprise within 12 months.

“Currently there is no provision within the Tories Draft Budget for 2010/11. A point that I have already put to Anthony Harris the new portfolio holder with responsibility for leisure across the borough” said Ian.

Friends of Willenhall Leisure Centre have announced a public meeting to be held at the Leisure Centre on Tuesday 2nd March @ 6.30pm to which they have invited Cllr. Harris to answer this and other questions about the future of the centre.

There was a touch of irony later in the meeting as the PRG received an update of the opportunities for the regeneration of Willenhall through the “Joint Core Strategy Vision for Willenhall” where it pointed to “Improved Culture, Leisure, Health and Education facilities to ensure higher quality of life in the area.

The reality of this to date is that Walsall’s Tory controlled Council has done nothing to improve opportunities for culture in Willenhall but it has closed a Willenhall school (Sneyd). Now it wants to close Willenhall Leisure Centre.

Add to that the continued refusal of Walsall Primary Care Trust (PCT) to provide Short Heath with a much needed health centre, the Vision for Willenhall in reality is vastly different to the one the Tories would have you believe.

The European Parliament today voted in favour of a resolution from LibDem MEP Liz Lynne calling for new laws to tackle the danger of needle stick injuries in the workplace, which can cause HIV or other serious infections.

The problem is particularly acute for nurses in the NHS and other heath services, with campaigners estimating that up to 1 million preventable injuries are sustained from sharp objects in workplaces around the EU every year……… http://bit.ly/94dMxs

“The Tories seem to think that half our teenagers are pregnant, our cities are like The Wire and that people will get married for a few extra quid,” said Nick Clegg’s Chief of Staff.

Commenting on the Tories’ mistaken claim that 54% of teenagers in deprived areas fall pregnant before their 18th birthday, Danny Alexander said:

“The Tories seem to think that half our teenagers are pregnant, our cities are like The Wire and that people will get married for a few extra quid.

“If they really believe Britain is like this, it’s remarkable that Conservative MPs can pluck up the courage to leave their houses.

“They should lower their drawbridges, spend less time tending their moats and duck houses, and join the rest of us in the real world.”

The Tories today published a list of ‘Ten reasons to vote Conservative’ which did not include any reference to the environment or climate change.

This is despite David Cameron’s claim that