Ed Davey’s choice of words when presenting a political case is always worth close attention as he is a man very interested in the details and nuances of political messaging. (He was for a while under Ming Campbell’s leadership in charge of refashioning the party’s messaging.)

So what to make of his initial description of his role in charge at the Department of Environment and Climate Change? He said,

Greening the economy isn’t just good for the planet – it’s good for the wallets, purses and pockets.

In choosing to present issues in that way, he’s very much following in the footsteps of Chris Huhne. It is not so much a deep green message that is against economic growth, as a lighter shade of green, saying environmental action is good for economic growth.

It’s a broad tent approach – pitching green measures not just at those deeply concerned about the environment but also at those who are much more concerned about other issues – such as jobs and income.

That’s a wise approach, because long-term policies with long-term objectives require a broad consensus not only amongst politicians but also amongst the public. That requires pitching to the wider audience in just the way he is doing.

* Mark Pack is Co-Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and writes a monthly newsletter about the Liberal Democrats.

Only three days into the job and Ed Davey’s first political challenge has arisen – a demand from the unreconstructed Tory back benches for a halt to onshore wind farm development. The Tories are taking aim at the subsidies onshore wind farm receive to enable them to compete with fossil fuel, claiming that they’re unaffordable in a time of austerity – and in this, I’m sorry to say, they’ve been joined by two of our Welsh MPs, Roger Williams and Mark Williams.

While one expects the Tories to be at their most equivocal on green issues, it’s a bit worrying when our side joins in – not the least when the newest wind turbine factory in the UK is actually in Wales, at Chepstowe. The environment to one side, I can’t imagine a political strategy of trying to prevent jobs is going to be successful. That being said, the strength of local opposition to onshore wind farms – particularly amongst the retired, who are more likely to vote – can make it difficult for traditional localists like ourselves to not join in. I can understand why Roger and Mark have found it expedient to sign up to the Tories’ letter.

However, they were wrong to do so, as the letter itself is simply incorrect. It demands that subsidies for onshore wind are transferred to other, cheaper, forms of renewable energy. It doesn’t specify which ones, for the very simple reason that they don’t exist. Onshore wind is the cheapest low-carbon energy source, less expensive than nuclear, and much less expensive than carbon capture and storage (CCS). Cutting subsidies for onshore wind means we’ll need to pay other technologies more to displace the same emissions, pushing up the cost of going green.

It will have other costs too. People make a big deal out of wind power being intermittent, without realising that’s kind of the point. It’s a free resource we can use when it’s available, and go back to non-renewable sources when it’s not. It allows us to minimise the emissions of our existing energy infrastructure, until it’s replaced or we finally get CCS working, whenever that might be. Even then, it will save fuel – fuel that’s only going to get more expensive.

And this is the fundamental point. Even if the subsidies are cut, all it will do is delay the expansion of wind power, which will always have the advantage of zero fuel costs. Bloomberg has predicted that it will become cost-competitive with gas power by 2016, meaning that all the Tory proposals will do is delay its expansion by at most ten years. However, that’s ten years of higher carbon emissions, and hence a greater risk of climate change. If we drop it now, we’ll only repeat the 80s – when the previous Tory Government failed to support the nascent British wind power industry, and all the jobs went to Denmark and Germany. If we want to build a green economy – and I would hope all our MPs support that – onshore wind must be part of it.

The Guardian reports:

Seven hospital trusts struggling with crippling private finance initiative debts are to receive £1.5bn in emergency funding from the government to help them avoid cutting patient services to pay their bills.

The Department of Health is making the £1.5bn available – in grants, not loans – to the seven hospital trusts in England with some of the heaviest PFI debts through a “stability” fund. Trusts will be able to use the money to meet PFI repayments, rather than their usual budgets, as long as they meet four conditions set out by the department.

The move will help trusts such as South London Healthcare NHS trust, which is facing a PFI repayment in 2012-13 of £66.8m under the terms of a deal agreed in July 1998, in the early days of Tony Blair’s government. They will be able to access the £1.5bn over the next 25 years, until the PFI contracts end.

Andrew Lansley, the health secretary, said he had been forced to use taxpayers’ money because certain NHS organisations could no longer afford to honour PFI deals that had been “badly negotiated” by Labour ministers.

You can read the full story here.

Benefits are not an easy subject to get your head around: we have a benefits system with enough acronyms, assessments, taper rates and tax credits to make your head spin. That’s why this Government is finally undertaking a hugely important and long-overdue reform of benefits.

Universal Credit will replace the complicated mix of tax credits, JSA, ESA, Housing Benefit and so on with one simple benefit. And the Universal Credit is why the Welfare Reform Bill is so crucial. It will revolutionise the way we support those who are unemployed, disabled, sick or caring for a loved one and is why we have to support the Bill and ensure it becomes law.

However, alongside this important measure, the Bill included proposals to reduce spending on various parts of the welfare budget. Across Government, departments are having to cut their budgets in order to reduce the deficit, and since DWP has the biggest budget by a long way, if we don’t make savings here, every other department would face impossible cuts.

Cutting money from DWP is not easy, as by definition it goes to those most in need. But the Government is trying to protect the most vulnerable from the cuts it has to make and I believe that this means protecting the sickest and the poorest.

The most controversial proposal in the Bill was the plan to limit to one year the length of time someone receives Contributory Employment and Support Allowance.

I want to make it clear that no-one has found this Bill easy and all Lib Dem MPs were acutely aware of the Conference motion rejecting any arbitrary time limit on ESA payments. But I also want to explain why we made the decision to support the Government.

Firstly, let me be clear – the choice before us last week was between two arbitrary time limits. One was just longer than the other. And the Lords’ Amendment would have cost £1.6b a year, money which would have to have been found from elsewhere in DWP’s budget.

To explain the policy itself: the time limit only applies to those in the Work Related Activity Group, who need support but are likely to be able to return to work in the future. The sickest and most disabled people go into the Support Group, and they are not affected by any time limit.

The proposals also do not affect the poorest people. Anyone with savings below £16,000, who has a partner working fewer than 24 hours will still get ESA for as long as they need it. Because of this, 6 out of 10 people will continue to receive some or all of their ESA after the end of their year on contributory benefit.

And those who don’t receive ESA after the 12 months will be entitled to housing benefit, council tax benefit, working tax credits and child tax credits, so many will still receive a significant amount of support.

So, given that these proposals won’t affect the sickest, as they will be in the Support Group, and they won’t affect the poorest, as they will still receive ESA, I think this is the fairest way of implementing a cut that no-one wants to bring in.

For me the most important thing is to make the system fairer; to ensure that people get into the right group in the first place, so that those who need it go into the Support Group with no time limit.

This means making sure that the Work Capability Assessment works, and that is why I strongly support the work being done by Prof Harrington. His first recommendations on improving the WCA have already been implemented and they appear to be making a difference. The Government has promised to follow his future recommendations as well, especially on chronic pain and fatigue. These are often huge barriers to work for many of those with chronic conditions but they are not properly picked up in the assessment.

The Government is also currently consulting on changing the rules for those with cancer, so the presumption is that they should go into the Support Group and as a result receive indefinite support.

I accept that many Lib Dem members are disappointed that we MPs supported the Government on Wednesday. But the Bill has changed in many ways during its passage through Parliament, and we can be proud of driving many of those changes. I hope that you can understand why we voted the way we did and see that it was all with the aim of improving the system and making the cuts as fair as possible.