Clegg's Faulty Secret Courts Logic

I sat in the wrong place in the hall on Saturday for Nick Clegg's Q&A. I was about 2/3rds of the way back and despite thrusting my hand up every time he went back to the audience I didn't get picked for a question. Indeed he only really seemed to pick from about the first 6 rows which was all I think he could see.

But if he had have picked me I was going to highlight a particular bit of faulty logic in one of his comments about secret courts. In fact that's being generous. Sophistry would be a better word.

He claimed that there had been no point in Lib Dem MPs voting against Secret Courts as it still would have passed. According to Nick there was simply not a majority in the House of Commons to defeat the legislation. I'll put aside the fact that some commentators actually believe there could have been a majority against Secret Courts if the parliamentary Lib Dems with their liberal credentials had given a clear lead in opposing them.

Notwithstanding that Clegg's argument is ridiculous. If Charles Kennedy and the then Lib Dem leadership had followed that line of thinking in 2003 they would have voted for the invasion of Iraq. After all, there was not a majority in the House to defeat that either so they might as well have done according to the Deputy Prime Minister.

The fact that this argument seemed to form the backbone of his Secret Courts response demonstrates to me just how poor the thinking on this bill has been from our leadership.

I'm backing the no all-male Panel Pledge - are you?

At Lib Dem conference this weekend I had a cunning plan. I had been challenged by my House of Comments co-host Emma that the next time I was at an all male panel at an event that I would question why there were no women to ask questions of from the floor. The idea being that the more this is highlighted, the more likely it is that organisers of events will eventually be embarrassed into ensuring panels have better gender balance.

I had had my attention drawn by Jennie Rigg to an event that was scheduled for the Friday night on social media which had a male chair and 4 male panelists. I turned up, parked myself on the front row and was all set to ask my killer question on International Women's Day of all days! It was going to be a real zinger! I was going to leave them floundering!

Then Olly Grender pulled up a chair at the end of the panel and sat down. My evil plan was torpedoed. I couldn't ask my question now that a woman had been included in the panel.

I was of course pleased that I wasn't forced to sit through yet another male only panel. Olly had some great insights into the use of social media from her perspective as a former Lib Dem communications supremo.

Mark Pack who was also one of the panelists had got wind of what I was planning due to some Twitter activity on the subject and the next day we had a chat about it. He suggested something that he has been considering for a while which had been resurrected in his mind by what had nearly happened the night before.

Mark wanted to make a pledge that he would refuse to appear on any panel he was asked onto at any future Lib Dem conferences unless there is at least one woman on the panel. We both agreed this is an excellent idea and I agreed I would also make the same pledge. Mark has written about this today for Lib Dem Voice.

We are both encouraging all male Lib Dems to make the same pledge. That you will not agree to sit on any panel where all the contributors are going to be male.

The more men we can get to agree to this, including MPs and Peers who are almost always in one of the slots on panels the more likely we are to ensure more gender balance in future. Who knows, if we're really successful by the time of the Autumn conference we may end up with no panel without at least one woman on. That has never happened before and is an excellent first to aim for.

So leave comments on here or on Mark's post pledging your commitment to the Panel Pledge. Write about it. Tweet about it. Blog about it. Talk about it.

We can make a real difference. We just need to exercise our right to say no to all male panels.

My Secret Courts Pledge

Well that was a very difficult weekend.

I enjoyed Lib Dem conference itself as usual. It was good to meet up with some old friends and some new ones.

But it was terribly dispiriting to see Nick Clegg's high-handed and frankly arrogant response during his Q&A to the questions about Secret Courts. It is clear that he thinks the membership is ill-informed on the issue and that he is absolutely fine with the fact that he, his ministers and the majority of his parliamentary party have voted for such an illiberal measure.

I was gutted to see Jo Shaw resign yesterday. However I totally understand her reasons for doing so. Between you and me I have considered doing so myself. But for now I have chosen to take a different path.

At election time I get bombarded with requests to come and help MPs and PPCs. Indeed in the run up to the Eastleigh by-election I was getting daily requests for this. I did go and help out down on the south coast one Saturday and in the 2010 election I went to numerous constituencies to help our candidates out.

So here is my pledge. I refuse to help get re-elected any of our MPs who voted for the Justice and Security Bill. I will not deliver leaflets or canvass (either in person or telephone) for any of them. For PPCs this is more tricky because they weren't in the House to vote but I will discuss the issue with any who ask me to help out and I will be happy to do so if they are clear they would have voted against.

I expect the motion at conference yesterday which for the second time has made clear the party's feelings on this issue will be ignored by the leadership. But this is a two-way street. The leadership cannot do what it likes and for there to be no consequences. At least that's how I see it and this is what I intend to do from my end.

Is anyone else with me?

Quote of the day

From former parliamentary candidate Jo Shaw delivered at the very end of her conference speech earlier today in Brighton paraphrasing Harry Willcock explaining why she was resigning from the Lib Dems on the issue of secret courts:

Because I am a liberal, and a democrat, and I am against this sort of thing.

Lib Dem conference voting reps: Please vote for the secret courts emergency motion #ldconf

My secret courts emergency motion I submitted on Tuesday has not been selected for the ballot for debate tomorrow morning. However the good news is that there was another motion on this subject submitted by Jo Shaw who has campaigned tirelessly on the issue. I am very pleased there there is a motion on this available and I strongly urge any Lib Dem conference voting reps reading this who are in Brighton today to please vote for it.

The ballot is preferential and although a 1 would be best, if you are supporting another motion please put the secret courts one second.

The ballot is open between 9am and 1pm today at conference.

Please help us ensure that we will be debating this issue of vital importance tomorrow morning.

Secret Courts emergency motion for Lib Dem Conference

Earlier today I submitted the following emergency motion relating to last night's Secret Courts vote for Lib Dem conference this weekend. There is a slot on Sunday morning where urgent issues can be debated.

There is also a motion that has been submitted by Jo Shaw who has been an outstanding campaigner on this issue for a long time.

I am very hopeful that one of these motions will be picked. My one is a bit more succinct and tries to make a broader point to the leadership but the important thing is we debate the issue as our internal democracy is currently under threat.





Conference believes that the way the party has recently voted with respect to the Justice and Security Bill has fallen short of the party's founding principles. Conference urges the party in government to take more account of the views of members and its founding principles when deciding policies to support within government. Conference acknowledges that it is difficult to strike a balance in a coalition but that there are certain precepts that should underpin any such negotiations.

Conference asserts that the preamble to the constitution is central to our reason for existence and therefore these key principles should be:

a)      Safeguarding a fair, free and open society.
b)      Balancing the fundamental values of liberty, equality and community.
c)       Ensuring that no-one shall be enslaved by, poverty ignorance or conformity.

Conference urges the party’s parliamentarians in the Commons and the Lords to vote in accordance with the principles that underpin the Liberal Democrats in any future votes on the Justice and Security Bill and other legislation.

The Lib Dem leadership are treading a dangerous path

I'm off down to Brighton on Friday.

I really like the Sussex seaside town and I am sure I will find plenty to do while I am there. There's the pier, the Laines, the beach, the Royal Pavilion and lots of nice restaurants.

While I'm down there I may pop into the Lib Dem conference which is on. That is ostensibly the reason I am actually going to be there to get involved in debates and vote on party policy. Although after last night's vote where the parliamentary Lib Dems were whipped to vote for the Secret Courts bill against the clear expressed will of the party membership in conference votes I am thinking it might well not be worth it. After all if our ministers in government can just completely ignore what its members think despite the fact that we are supposed to be a democratic party then why should I bother?

I suspect plenty of others will be wondering this today. I also suspect in the light of the Eastleigh by-election result that many will be questioning whether it is worth campaigning so hard for the party in future too. Thousands of activists poured into the seat in the last few weeks in order to help us secure the by-election victory. Now as it happens Mike Thornton had not been sworn in in time for the division last night so he couldn't vote. I'll be generous to Mike and assume there is a good reason for this. Although I will say that if I had been elected MP for Eastleigh last week I'd have made damn sure I was sworn in in time and then voted against the bill along with the 7 other Lib Dem "rebels" who actually voted the way the party membership wants. But it is a real kick in the face for all of those activists who fought so hard to deliver the "stunning victory" that has so boosted Clegg in recent days. I was one of them and I have to say that I will not be as keen to go out and fight for our party on the doorsteps in future if we don't see a real change in how our internal democracy is accounted for in government.

What's even more infuriating about this is that it appears the timing of the vote was scheduled precisely to avoid an "embarrassing" vote at conference that would put further pressure on Clegg and our ministers to vote against this bill. So our leadership has connived with the Tories to deny its own membership on this key piece of legislation.

I understand it is difficult for Lib Dem ministers to get their way on things all the time but liberty is a fundamental precept of our party. Secret Courts are diametrically opposite to what we should be doing. We need an urgent review into how to fix our broken democracy. This weekend's conference is the place to do it.

And if we don't then perhaps next time conference is in Brighton all the other attractions may prove too tempting for me. Let's face it, wandering around the Laines and the Pavilion may be time better spent if our votes on key issues like this count for nothing.

Interview with Nick Clegg - Part Two

My prize for winning Lib Dem Blog of the Year on Saturday was a 25 minute interview with Lib Dem party leader and Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg. I posted the first part yesterday where we discussed the coalition's legacy, pension funding for mortgages and a particular hobby-horse of mine, drugs policy. Here is the second and final part of the interview including a discussion on how his speech last year that stated "Birth should never be destiny" can be reconciled with his support for an hereditary monarchy, the three things he likes about Ed Miliband and whether anything can be done to improve PMQs. My questions are in bold. The rest are Nick's words:


Slightly changing tack now. In Spring 2011 in a speech about social mobility you used the phrase “Birth should never be destiny” which I completely agree with. But how can you reconcile this with your support for an hereditary monarchy?

I just don’t believe for a minute that if you were to man the barricades and effect a revolution to turn the United Kingdom from a monarchy into a republic, suddenly the problems of poor housing, poor infant health, poor pre-school support, poor education for poor children in primary schools would suddenly be solved. I think it’s the wrong answer to a much more profound social problem which is bound up with our education system, housing and patterns of work. I just happen to think that the monarchy provides a sense of identity and clearly brings a great sense of sort of value and pride to the country. I think it unites people, and we want to unite people rather than divide them. I don’t think the monarchy in and of itself is why we have these huge social and economic forces and factors that prejudice the lives of children who are born into poor backgrounds.

I think what is be slightly different which may be what you’re after is: “Does it foster a culture of diffidence and hierarchy?”. I personally think Britain is not a particularly diffident or hierarchical society, I mean people just don’t take authority no questions asked any more.

I was going to phrase it slightly differently than diffidence. I was going to ask isn’t it true that because our head of state is there by virtue of birth rather than merit that it undermines the case at a fundamental level within our society for meritocracy which is something that as liberals we should be striving more for?

I’m going to give you an answer which is really based on real world pragmatism rather than theory. I’m sure you could write a sort of theoretical case for all sorts of radical reforms within our society and heaven knows I’ve tried to get rid of some of the obvious bastions of privilege and patronage in the House of Lords which was difficult. In fact it proved to be impossible because of the vested interests in the establishment parties…

…and I am aware that there is a big majority in the country currently in favour of the monarchy so I realise that this is a rather academic discussion.

Yes, and I personally, not least now that I actually have more contact with members of the Royal family have actually become a stronger supporter of the monarchy than I even was before.

So were you already a strong supporter of the monarchy?

Well, if you ask me “What are the things that would make society more liberal?” “What are the things that will ensure that a bright but poor child is not condemned by the circumstances of their birth?” I just wouldn’t put fiddling around with the monarchy anywhere on my shopping list of things to do. I’d put education, I’d put taxation, I’d put housing, health, jobs…

…I understand the point you’re making but don’t you think like for example in the US where any child could potentially become the President and the Head of State that that says something fundamental about that society and how it operates?

Well let’s first crack our immediate problem which is that children at the moment irrespective of their circumstances of birth don’t think that they could become Prime Minister! Or even leader of the Liberal Democrats. I think the displace the failings of the political class or decant them into an argument about the monarchy is slightly letting the politicians off the hook. We have a political class, people like me, dare I say it people like you: Blokes In Suits…

…I don’t normally wear a suit. I wore it especially for you Nick!

Well I’m flattered Mark! But a political class who are not representative of modern diverse Britain. That is a much more urgent problem we should be addressing it seems to me than reopening a debate that the British people don’t want us to reopen and that I genuinely don’t think has the direct effect on lack of meritocracy that you feel. I hear what you say but I don’t share that view.

OK. So my last two questions. They are both related. Politics is a rough old game and there is often bad blood between politicians and leaders of different parties. So to combat that can you list three things that you like about Ed Miliband?

He’s approachable, he’s interested in policy…

…and is he willing to engage in sensible debate because you don’t always get that from for example PMQs?

But PMQs is not a debate, it’s a shouting match!

He’s got a perfectly good sense of humour. He’s a civilised human being. I’ve talked to him on several occasions and I have found him easy to talk to.

He’s wrong though! But that’s a different matter.

Linked to this do you think that PMQs and politics in general might benefit from a change in approach? A friend of mine recently suggested that you could still have PMQs but once a week the Prime Minister and Leader of the Opposition sit in a room with a moderator and for half an hour or three quarters of an hour just debate policy. Without all the baying and the jeering and the “playing for your team”. Do you think politics might benefit from something like that?

Look, I’ve been through this myself. The problem that we have at the moment is that if you act in a thoughtful, considered, emollient, human manner in the bear-pit of politics whether that’s on the floor of the House of Commons or some moderated discussion what I’ve discovered is that people immediately brand that as weak and ineffective.

I mean I saw it myself in the first few months of this government. When I did Deputy PMQs or stood in for PMQs I tried a kind of… I mean sometimes I didn’t, sometimes I’d lose it and shout at the Labour benches but you know if I was to sort of engage then it would be written up the following day as “Oh, he’s weak, he’s rubbish” all the rest of it. If I got up and just yelled at the other side, said a few jokes, made them look ridiculous and beat them round the head and neck it would be “Oh, a good strong improved performance”. I’m afraid that there’s this remorseless logic at the moment for the way in the which politics is communicated, interpreted and mediated by the press which just constantly ramps up the antagonism. It doesn’t mean that politicians can’t speak to each other but I wouldn’t hold your breath that there’s a new public forum. Much that I would like the idea that politicians could have a sort of fireside chat. At the moment, funnily enough particularly at the moment I think there is a rather shrill, almost semi-hysterical tone which is entering into the coverage of politics in part of our press. I think it’s partly because the press themselves are quite anxious about how they are going to hold onto their own readers so they are becoming ever more hyperbolic in order to try and hold onto people.

Thank you very much Nick!

Thank you!

Jo Swinson could be our next leader

Picture courtesy of Wikipedia

I have followed Jo Swinson's career with interest. Until recently she was PPS to Nick Clegg and she was recently promoted to minister for employment and equality.

She is always keen to talk with activists and others on Twitter. She is relentlessly polite and engaging on issues and having observed her speaking at a number of fringe events over the years is an excellent public speaker in that sort of forum.

But where I have noticed her potential most of all is how she handles the much bigger stage in the main conference hall. She always appears to effortlessly have full mastery of her brief, whatever it may be and has a very persuasive manner. A good example was today during the "Generating jobs and growth in a time of austerity" debate which she summated. She very deftly handled the task of pulling together the strands of what everyone else had said as well as gently but firmly explaining why she thought an amendment that had been moved to try and change the nature of the motion was not in her view the right way to go. In fact there was a flash of steel at one point where she essentially described it as crazy albeit by utilising the device of quoting what Tim Farron had actually said about something else entirely. But there was no mistaking what she meant.

I was actually reminded a little bit of a young Tony Blair. Jo certainly has a lot of political charisma and it could take her a long, long way.

I was going to say in this post that she might be in contention to be "the next party leader but one". But on further reflection, I see no reason why she should not go for it the next time there is a vacancy. Cable and Farron will be the obvious runners but an insurgent campaign from the MP for East Dunbartonshire could yield great dividends. There will be lots of opportunity for her to demonstrate her political and debating skills during a leadership contest and I suspect that many party members will, like myself find their respect for her as a candidate increase the more they see of her.

I don't expect there to be a vacancy for a while (as I have repeatedly said to various radio stations in the last few days here at conference!) but when there eventually is, I would urge Jo to go for it.

Interview with Nick Clegg - Part One

My prize for winning Lib Dem Blog of the Year on Saturday was a 25 minute interview with Lib Dem party leader and Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg. Here is the first part of the interview where we discussed the coalition's legacy, pension funding for mortgages and a particular hobby-horse of mine, drugs policy. My questions are in bold. The rest are Nick's words:


Thank you for agreeing to see me Nick

Not at all!

If we could start with a question kind of about the future but a little bit about the past too. With Lords reform now dead, what will be the coalition’s historic legacy do you think?

Oh I think the coalition’s historic legacy will be, firstly being a coalition! For those of us like you and I who are interested in politics being done differently and moving our sclerotic political culture forward, don’t forget that showing people multi-party politics works and that you don’t always just have to have either the blue team or the red team in charge is arguably more important than any one piece of legislation in terms of advancing the kind of politics that we believe in. Plural, evidence based, reasonable, where people set aside their differences in the national interest. I think that is massive and I don’t think that can be exaggerated. I think sometimes as Liberal Democrats we need to remind ourselves that however much people might be irritated by the antics of the Tory right and however much we might want to govern on our own actually proving that coalition works remains a massive strategic priority. And you know there are other things we are doing to change politics. The Fixed Term Parliament Bill which I think sometimes people assume that that’s just a small little ball; it’s not, it’s quite a big thing. We’ve been campaigning on that for generations and that actually changes politics quite significantly. I do think as a legacy we will have proved that politics can be done differently. That’s the first thing.

The second big thing is that we will be the government that has had to cope with the fallout of the biggest economic crisis this country has arguably faced for decades. I don’t think it is possible to exaggerate quite how serious this implosion was in the heart of our economy back in 2008. It’s not any old recession, I mean that was a complete breakdown, a sort of seizure in the heart, in the kind of transmission mechanism of our country, our capitalist system.

Vince Cable has described it as being like a heart attack.

Yes, it is very similar. The banking system is like a heart. It pumps money round the system. It’s like a heart pumping blood around a body and it had stopped. I sometimes think that people who say “Wellll, you should do this plan or that plan”…

The idea that you can recover from a heart attack of that severity with one policy or one wave of the magic wand. I think history will judge us very kindly in that if we hadn’t stepped up to the plate to provide a government that could pull us back from the precipice, which is where we were teetering back in 2010. If we can show by 2015, not that we’ve sorted everything out but that we have basically pointed the economy… by the way not simply putting Humpty Dumpty back together again, but actually rewiring the economy on a different basis, I think we will have done a great thing because we will have not only fixed the problem but we will have learnt the lessons from the past. By the way this agenda includes really, really building on green growth and not having this ludicrous stand-off between people who say you have to have growth and those who say you have to go green as if the two things are separate. They’re not. They go hand in hand.

And the third big thing for me is to make sure we don’t only repair the economy but that we also at the same time seek to unblock society to make it fairer in the very specific sense of giving people the opportunity to get ahead, live out their dreams and fulfil their talents. A liberal view of life is not one which wants to flatten and homogenise people but which wants to release potential in each and every individual. That’s why I place such emphasis on tax reforms so that people on low pay can keep more money. On our early years reforms so that two and three and four year olds get more support than they have ever done before. On the pupil premium, on making sure that we cherish vocational education just as much as university education. These are things which you would struggle to put some of it on a leaflet by 2015 but is what I think liberalism is all about. We live in a highly segregated society where privilege communicates itself across generations and where disadvantage does as well. Much more than in other liberally democratic developed nations.

So those are really the three things: changing politics for the good, fixing the economy but rewiring it for good and creating a really rich sense of fairness about how society works.

Just picking up that final point in the context of the announcement about the potential partial funding of mortgages from people’s parent’s and grandparent’s pensions which you made yesterday. Some people have been talking about it and I was just asked to discuss it on the radio. The question I’ve been asked and I am wondering myself is, isn’t this only going to help rich families basically? How is this progressive and how is it going to help poorer people?

Firstly you’re quite right that it doesn’t help everybody. It only helps those people who have got assets in pension pots which they can mobilise as a lump sum to offer as a guarantee to mortgage lenders so that your child or grandchild can take out a deposit. So it’s unashamedly for people with that asset. People who have got a £40,000 pension pot but have got very little disposable income, they don’t feel very rich. They may have very little in their current account and by no stretch of the imagination could they be called rich, yet they are people if you like in the middle or even low-to-middle income bracket who just so happen to have this pension pot which they wish to mobilise for the benefit of their children. So it’s not for everybody, you’re quite right. It is for people who have got a particular asset in the form of a pension pot. So it that sense it’s not for everybody. But it helps a set of people. The rough calculations from Steve Webb are that it could be made available to around 250,000 people in this country. Clearly not all of them will do it, but even if a small proportion do that’s still helping thousands and thousands of youngsters and helping them get a home that they otherwise wouldn’t get. It’s not a catch-all solution.

So you see it as part of a basket of measures to help?

Of course.

I know there are lots of other things being done as well but particularly when it comes to helping people get a house, or get a residence (it doesn’t always have to be a house). I used to rent for many years actually and one time I just had to get out of my house within two months because the landlord decided he wanted to let it to his son. I had no real security of tenure beyond a couple of months, I had to go. It was very frustrating and I just wonder what measures you think would be appropriate to help in that area.

I think what we need, above all frankly is more homes. More affordable homes, more social homes and more private homes for rent. There are a lot of people in the lower income bracket, not the lowest who rely increasingly on private rented accommodation and that’s why, much though all the press coverage of the announcements I and the Prime Minister made recently about the housing package were all about the temporary removal of the restrictions on extending your conservatory. Actually by far the biggest thing, something that’s never happened before which is that we broke the taboo in the treasury that says “Oooh, you can’t use the government’s balance sheet to offer as a sort of insurance policy” we offered £10 billion worth of guarantees to the registered social landlords and the house-builders who build housing for private rent. And they are telling us that this is going to be a massive shot in the arm for the provision of housing that you say people rely upon. Particularly those people who can’t get onto the property ladder as owners outright, or are often in transition in their professional or family life.

I wanted to ask you about perhaps a slightly controversial issue, drugs policy. Barack Obama recently said that drugs policy “is a legitimate topic for debate”. I think sometimes in the US it’s closed down as an issue but he’s clearly receptive to it. David Cameron himself called for a debate on legalisation of drugs 10 years ago when he was part of a select committee and signed up to the report that said that. There are also serious moves taking place in Latin America along these lines, I’m sure you’re aware of them. The world is moving on so is it possible that the coalition could do something on this issue? Could perhaps make some changes in a direction that would help reduce harms caused by drugs?

Firstly, I’m at the Liberal Democrat end of this debate in that I start from an assumption that the so-called War on Drugs is a spectacular failure and that we’ve got to be driven by evidence, not prejudice nor dogma…

Do you think that this government is receptive to that though?

Well I was going to come to that. I actually think that if you look at what we’re doing as a government in the drugs strategy, published in the first few months of the government’s life… Would it be the drugs strategy that a Liberal Democrat would write? Probably not but there is a lot in there, particularly on remedial support for people who have long term drug addictions which is very, very promising indeed. If you listen to the stuff that Ken Clarke was promoting as Justice Secretary and even Chris Grayling with his reputation for a being a “hard man of the right” actually I think there is now a cross-party consensus that we cannot simply carry on warehousing people in our prisons who have very serious mental health or drug conditions and not deal with those conditions themselves. So I think that’s a change. However, do I think there might be a case to look at this again? Well of course you’ve got to look at this, over and over again. We don’t have the answer to something which is a scourge in society.

But even measures like for example changing the categorisation of cannabis which was moved from B to C and then back to B. Cannabis is widely perceived as being a lot less harmful than something like alcohol.

Mmm.

The fact that this government, and not just this government, every government for many decades seems to largely ignore the evidence on this issue. Do you think there is any possibility of the government moving in a more progressive direction on something like cannabis? Just to put it into context as well there was a recent study that demonstrated fairly unequivocally that children under the age of 18 can seriously damage the development of their brains. But after the age of 18, there isn’t really that risk there. I’m not saying there is not risk with cannabis after 18 but that particular one is not there. So I thought it might be more appropriate to legalise cannabis but make it so that children cannot get hold of it in the same way as currently with alcohol, rigorously enforce that and therefore send a message that is evidence based regarding that particular drug. The drugs laws at the moment are not taken very seriously by some, perhaps because they’re not based very much in evidence, you know “All drugs are as bad as each other”. People know that is not true.

Basically I agree with your assumption that politicians should, in as much as it is possible for politicians to do this, refrain from seeking to make unilateral decisions, which of course need to be informed by what the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs say, and what the police say and others. That’s certainly a principle that, I’m not going to pretend is always met in practise but is certainly one that I am personally very committed to.

The second thing I would say is that you are quite right, there are an increasing number of bodies who are revisiting this debate in the round. So for instance the Home Affairs Select Committee has been looking at this now for a long time and I think is due to report in December. I will be reading that very, very closely indeed. If a cross-party select committee revisits some of these issues and urges us to open them up as a government, I think the onus is on us, not them to explain why we shouldn’t. Because every time people look at this issue on a cross-party basis in a considered fashion, it seems to me over several years now including in the committee that David Cameron once sat, actually the advice is for radical action towards a more evidence based approach. I will look out for what the HASC has with quite an open mind.

You may not be able to answer this question because I am sure you can’t read David Cameron’s mind but do you think that he would be receptive to such a debate? He certainly seemed to be 10 years ago and I wonder what’s changed.

I’ve no idea. I haven’t talked to him about it. I strongly suspect the Conservative Party as it has been for a long time is quite divided on this issue. You do have a liberal wing in the Conservative Party that is actually quite thoughtful and liberal and not hidebound by prejudice or fear of the Daily Mail headlines which is prepared to be free-thinking about this, driven by the evidence. Then you have another wing of the Conservative Party which you know, just wants to grab the headlines and appear tough even if it doesn’t actually help youngsters who are addicted and it doesn’t actually help reduce crime. Like so many things in the Conservative Party, there is this constant battle for its soul. We are lucky enough that we operate in the Liberal Democrats on this issue from a pretty calm, considered, reasonable and evidence based approach.


Tomorrow I will post the remainder of my interview with Nick including a discussion on how his speech last year that stated "Birth should never be destiny" can be reconciled with his support for an hereditary Monarchy, the three things he likes about Ed Miliband and whether anything can be done to improve Prime Minister's Questions!


You can now read the second part of the interview here.

Lib Dem Blog of the Year!

I was very surprised and honoured to win the Lib Dem Blog of the Year award at the BOTYs held here in Brighton last night. I have only been blogging on and off in the last year for family reasons that regular readers will know about but I have dipped in and out with my thoughts/rants as and when I have felt that I have something to say. It means a lot to me that people have nominated this blog and I would also like to thank the judges.

The other shortlisted blogs in this category were Caron’s Musings by Caron Lindsay, The Ramblings of Neil Monnery by Neil Monnery and A View from Ham Common by Richard Morris, all of which I regularly read and and enjoy and any of whom would have been worthy winners.

Congratulations also to the winners in the other categories:


Best new Liberal Democrat blog (started since 1st September 2011)
The Libertine, edited by Morgan Griffith-David

Best blog from a Liberal Democrat holding public office (The Tim Garden Award)
A Lanson Boy by Cllr Alex Folkes (Launceston Central)

The Andrew Reeves award for Best use of social media/e-campaigning by a Liberal Democrat
Bears for Belarus by Liberal Youth

Best non-Liberal Democrat politics blog
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My prize is a 25 minute one on one interview with Nick Clegg tomorrow. Hopefully I can think of some insightful questions to ask him. Feel free to make suggestions!

This Lib Dem conference vetting farce cannot happen again #ldconf

Cast your mind back to October 2007. A fresh faced recently elected MP is running for the leadership of his party. One of the most eye-catching and in some ways audacious comments that the MP made was on ID cards which he was clearly completely opposed to:

“If the legislation is passed I will lead a grassroots campaign of civil disobedience to thwart the identity cards programme … I, and I expect thousands of people like me, will simply refuse ever to register.”

The MP was Nick Clegg and as we know not long afterwards he was elected leader of the Lib Dems. And now he is Deputy Prime Minister leading a party of 57 MPs as part of a coalition government.

The party's federal conference in Birmingham is due to start in a couple of weeks time. And in a new twist, delegates registering to attend have to submit themselves to a police check.

The noises from the top of the party are very much in the vein of "that is the price we have to pay for being a governing party". I have read that without such checks the party would not have been able to get insurance for the venue. I have also read various comments of the ilk that because we have cabinet and junior government ministers wandering around conference we need to have more stringent security than we had previously.

Regarding the insurance comments I am afraid I am going to call BS on that one. I cannot believe that it is not possible to find insurance that will cover such an event without intrusive police checks on every single attendee.

Regarding the comments about ministers being in attendance, I know for a fact that at other events such as Nick Clegg visiting Newbury recently there were no such checks needed. You only needed to bring your party membership number. So why on earth is police vetting required for federal conference all of a sudden?

There is something deeply unsettling about the party that I joined over 3 years ago precisely because it stood for such strong liberal values such as being completely against ID cards acquiescing so easily to police vetting checks for its members and democratically elected conference representatives.

I really do not see why they are necessary. As Caron rightly points out there is already airport style security and scanners at the entrances to the conference venue. Surely that should be sufficient to ensure protection?

I have heard stories of people having their clearance rejected for various reasons. In some cases it is clear, in others not so much. Gareth Epps for example, a 3 time PPC and former councillor from Reading appears to have been rejected because of a problem with his photograph. I really wonder what danger Gareth will be deemed to pose if his picture is slightly indistinct. I guess the problem lies in the possibility that someone who is not Gareth but looks like him attempts to gain access to the conference. But even if that bizarre scenario was to occur, like I say there is ample security at the venue to prevent weapons etc. from getting in.

Perhaps even more fundamentally, should it be up to the police to decide who does or does not get to attend the main conference of a democratic party? Not to mention the fact that some people (e.g. transgendered) may not wish to submit themselves to a clunky process that may reveal information about themselves that they wished to keep private.

But aside from the principled objections I have there is a practical objection to the way this whole thing has been administered. Lots of Lib Dems have been commenting and tweeting that they have still not had the clearance they need to attend. With two weeks to go this is completely unacceptable. Hotel rooms get booked up in conference season and prices for booking at the last minute can be twice as much (or more) as if you are to book longer in advance. Train tickets are much cheaper in advance too and can be prohibitively expensive so close to the date of travel. I expect there will be people who wanted to attend and will ultimately be cleared to do so but will not be able to because of cost considerations. Not to mention those who take a chance, pay for the train ticket or the non-refundable hotel room only to find they cannot attend after all and have completely wasted their money. And bosses are sometimes not sympathetic towards people who book time off and then need to change their plans at the last minute etc. etc. etc.

None of this is liberal or democratic. I cannot believe that the Nick Clegg of 2007 would have been happy with any of this and I very much hope he is not happy now.

The upper echelons of the party need to reflect long and hard on the problems their attempts to adhere to more stringent security have caused. There are lots of activists who are pretty disgusted with it frankly, myself included.

There is a motion proposed by Stephen Gilbert MP at 9am on the Sunday morning of conference which will hopefully go some way towards redressing this woeful situation for the future. If you are attending conference I urge you to attend and make your voice heard and to vote for it if you have voting rights.

I can only hope that good sense eventually prevails and this sort of farce never happens again.

Do as I say, not as I do

There has been a slightly worrying tendency of late for my party, the Lib Dems to say one thing in terms of policy campaigns but then on the ground in practise to do something else.

The two examples that have reared their heads in the last few weeks are the situation regarding interns and most recently the security measures for Lib Dem conference. In both cases the party at the highest level is campaigning for something, in the case of interns it is to ensure they are paid a fair wage, in the case of security measures such as ID cards it is to scrap them and only have things that are absolutely necessary and proportionate in place and yet in both cases the party has very much been found wanting when it comes to practising what they preach.

The interns campaign is something I have been behind for a long time. It is terrible for social mobility in this country that some of the best and most coveted positions are only available to people who can afford to live without a wage for months on end and hence only end up going to those with wealthy parents. I was delighted when Nick Clegg threw his weight behind the campaign as Deputy PM. However more than two months later, not only have some individual Lib Dem MPs been advertising for unpaid interns but the party centrally has even been doing it. I am afraid this is just not on. It is simply not credible for us as a party to campaign on this issue if we are not willing to put our money where our mouth is.

The security arrangements at conference issue is a bit more nuanced in that there does have to be some security. But the way in which the party has gone about imposing the new measures does not leave me (and many other Lib Dems from what I have picked up) with a good taste in my mouth. I think the worst aspect of it is that what appears to have happened is that the police have asked for something (to have all sorts of information about putative attendees which they can then use as a reason to ban them from conference if their vetting processes say so) and the party has simply given it to them. This might be an unfair characterisation and I stand to be corrected in the comments but this is the way it is coming across. This party has campaigned for decades for civil liberties and was particularly vociferous in its opposition to ID cards. I remember one of Tony Blair's main arguments for ID cards at one stage (the arguments changed regularly as I recall) was that "the police want them". The security arrangements for conference seem to have exactly the same argument underpinning them and this does not sit easily with me. I am not saying there need be no security measures but aspects of this such as the data being stored "indefinitely" and the inconvenience and cost especially for younger members should be being challenged by the party.

I hope that the party can learn from these two different but related issues that if they are going to campaign on something, they need to be willing and able to put the principles being espoused into practise. That way the party will be leading the way rather than effectively saying "Do as I say, not as I do".

Birth should never be destiny

I was intrigued by a section from Nick Clegg's Spring Conference speech last month. Specifically this:

Life chances should not be determined by background.

Prospects should never be narrowed by the postcode of the home you are born into.

Birth should never be destiny.

As liberals, we believe in an open society

Where the power to shape your own future is in your hands

Where all roads are open, to all of our children

I couldn't agree more with this.

The problem is, on the 29th of this month I suspect Nick Clegg along with lots of his political contemporaries will be attending a wedding in Westminster Abbey. A wedding of a woman to a man who once his grandmother and father have died will become our head of state. He will achieve this office very specifically because of who he was born to. In other words a very clear example of the exact opposite of what Nick Clegg believes should happen. This road is not open to all. Instead it is only open to a very select group of people, all of whom are closely related to each other.

Nick should not attend the wedding. I am not suggesting he makes a big thing of it (although I would!) but I am sure he could quietly find something else to be doing that day. Otherwise he is helping to validate and perpetuate the system that props up the entire class structure of this country and that contributes to the problems highlighted so eloquently by our Deputy Prime Minister in the above quoted speech.

William Hague will not address #ldconf - but maybe he should

The Daily Mail today has a story that William Hague is to address the Lib Dem conference next month:

The Foreign Secretary, widely seen as one of the best orators in the Commons, is expected to lead a Conservative charm offensive at the gathering in Liverpool in the hope of winning over disaffected LibDem activists.

Tory sources suggest Mr Hague will give a 'witty' address, rather than focusing heavily on policy.

However according to a Cowley Street source that has got in touch it aint true:

William Hague is not part of the conference agenda and I can confirm that he has not been asked to speak at the Liberal Democrat conference. No Conservative ministers have ever been approached to speak at our conference.

Fringe events are still being finalised, and it is of course possible that an independent group may have invited Mr Hague to speak at their Fringe event. But this is no different to any other year and it is common for MPs of all parties to attend these events.

But maybe Hague should be invited to address the main conference. It would not be as high profile as getting David Cameron to address it which may be a good thing and if anyone can leaven the situation with genuine humour (rather than what often passes for politician's humour) whilst still making a good speech it would be Hague. He is by common consensus one of the best communicators of his political generation.

I guess after the rebuttal it is unlikely that any Conservative will address the main conference and that any blue presence will be confined to the fringes.

How much things have changed for the Lib Dems...

Just a few months ago, no Lib Dem MPs had any real political power outside of the party. Despite this they did manage sometimes to make a difference (notably for example with the Gurkhas) but largely they would discuss the party policies, attempt to influence a domestic audience and that was that.

Contrast that with this statement that I noticed whilst registering on the autumn conference web page yesterday:

Please note, in a change from previous years, the Leader's Speech will now take place on the afternoon of Monday 20 September. Nick Clegg, as Deputy Prime Minister, will be representing the country at a session of the United Nations in New York discussing the Millennium Development Goals on the Wednesday 22 September.

With the polls and all the difficult decisions, it's easy to forget just how far we have come in such a short time. Our leader is representing our country at the highest national level in issues of crucial importance.

Things have changed very, very quickly and I suspect the dynamics at play at conference will be quite different from anything any of us there will have seen before.

Special Lib Dem conference on the coalition - review

I attended the Special Lib Dem conference in Birmingham's NEC today which was called to allow voting reps within the party to vote on the recently negotiated coalition deal with the Conservatives.

The conference was structured around the main motion and also 9 amendments which had been drafted prior to the conference, mostly requiring the party to reaffirm its longer term commitments to certain policies and principles.

There seemed to be a mixed feeling to the event near the start. There were of course a lot of positive vibes. We are now a party of government and rubbing shoulders with ministers is a novel experience for us Lib Dems and the feeling I got was that people liked it! However of course there was sadness. I spotted a number of MPs who lost their seats and also candidates who despite huge efforts had not managed to win theirs. Some of the contributions from the podium referenced this.

All amendments were accepted and the vote at the end was overwhelmingly in favour of the coalition. I only saw a few hands voting against and reports suggest there were only a dozen or so out of the many hundreds of voting reps making sure that the total in favour far surpassed the two-thirds threshold.

Here are a few of the highlights from my perspective:

• Dr Evan Harris got a very warm reception as he moved an amendment clarifying the circumstances of the coalition especially relating to the Labour Party and their unwillingness to participate. He was his usual funny and yet serious self, quipping that the media were not allowed in because he was going to praise the leadership! He got a prolonged round of applause as he left the podium.
• Often it is Vince Cable who gets the best reception of the day at conference (apart from the leader) but today it was Simon Hughes who won this accolade. He delivered an absolutely barnstorming speech in favour of the coalition where he linked his campaigning of almost 30 years as an MP to how our party is now in a position to actually implement our policies. He whipped the crowd up into a frenzy and left the stage to a standing ovation. This contribution actually reminded me a little bit of John Prescott's speech in support of the abolition of Clause 4 to the Labour Party conference in 1994. Prescott's intervention was all the more powerful because it came from someone from the wing of the Labour Party where you would have expected opposition to it. It gave Tony Blair legitimacy in the move he was trying to make. I think Hughes provided a similar service to Clegg today. Hughes is very much from the Social Democratic wing of the Lib Dems and the fact that he was so firmly in favour of the coalition I expect helped convince some waverers in the party. Nick Clegg himself said in his speech that Hughes had given the speech of his life. I think he might well be right.
• Dinti Batstone gave a great speech about equality in representation and expressed real frustration at the smugness of Labour and Conservative people when debating with her about this. As she said: "It's easy to be smug about gender representation when you have loads of safe seats!"
  
• Tessa Munt, the newly elected MP for Wells was very impressive in my view. She has great stage presence and gave a well thought out speech delivered with a twinkle in her eye. I saw her speak at a fringe event last year and she was very good them too. I expect that she will be one to watch in the future.
• Having a parade of cabinet ministers making speeches was wonderful to see. In fact the only one of the 5 we have who did not appear on stage is David Laws. All the others (Danny Alexander, Vince Cable, Chris Huhne and of course Nick Clegg) did. It was great to see our MPs actually able to say what they will do in office rather than what they would like to do.
• Nick Clegg's speech hit all the right notes for me. There were jokes, e.g. he explained how David Laws' ratings were sky-high at 72% in a recent poll. He paused and then pointed out that it was a poll of Conservative members! He made comments like "The Freedom Bill is now going to come off our leaflets onto the statute books", again underlining how we are in a position to do rather than just say. He closed his speech by stating how humbled he was by the support that the party had given him and pledged that he would not let us down.

Some people I spoke to afterwards said that they now felt more comfortable with the coalition. I don't think anyone I spoke to had been thinking of voting against but from the perspective of someone like myself who was already in favour of the deal, it was good to see that the effect of the day seemed to have been to confirm in the minds of some who were not toally convinced that we are doing the right thing.

Although today's conference was not constitutionally necessary (the MPs and Federal Executive vote last Tuesday was all that was needed as they both passed with 75%) I think it was a very worthwhile thing for the party to do.

It has demonstrated yet again the democratic nature of my party.

PS: I am hearing reliable reports that Lynne Featherstone's speech was also an absolute corker. Unfortunately at that point I was queueing up to buy some food and hence I missed it.

Off to Lib Dem special conference

I am heading off to the Lib Dem special conference in Birmingham soon where the coalition deal will be debated and voted upon. It is an exciting time for the party and it will be fascinating to see how it all goes.

Charles Kennedy has come out against the agreement in today's Observer and I got a phone call from Stephen Nolan's show on 5 Live last night as the story was breaking to ask me to go on air and comment. I said that it was understandable that Charles and some others feel uneasy about this deal but that in my view, given the election result it was the best option available for the party and the country. There was no easy option and I feel strongly that none of the alternatives available would have been the right course to follow.

I will be voting for the coalition today.

My first speech to Lib Dem Conference #ldconf

Yesterday I made my first speech to Lib Dem Conference. It was on the Digital Economy Bill emergency motion which was being debated in the early slot of 9:15am.

I had decided on Saturday that I would like to speak on it after it had won the vote for which EM to be debated. Freedom of use of the internet is a very important issue to me. At first I was unsure however what I should say about it. I could have stood up there for an hour talking about all the reasons why the motion should pass but of course was I to be picked I was only going to get 3 minutes. Also, the advice in the conference directory is the try and make your point "probably different from everybody else's". I reasoned that there would already be numerous people trying to speak for the bill as a whole and making the broad civil liberties points that many of us in the party instinctively agree with. Lines 36 and 37 of the motion had leapt out at me when I had originally read it:

Reform of copyright legislation to allow fair use and to release from copyright protection works which are no longer available legally or whose authors cannot be identified (orphan works).

This section is particularly welcome by me and other people who very much like watching old TV shows and other things such as old continuity and news etc. I mean the sort of thing that the TV companies cannot make money out of, do not really care about any more, is not released commercially and never will be and yet remains in copyright.

I filled in my speaker's card and handed it in early afternoon. I then heard no more and by the time I got back to my hotel room at around midnight I was unsure whether I should write a speech. To be on the safe side I drafted some words which when I trialled them only lasted for about 90 seconds but at least I had a decent starting point.

When I got to the conference venue at about 8:45 yesterday morning I asked a steward how to find out who was being called and I was informed that I would only get 3 minutes notice as they would tell me to "stand by" when the previous speaker went up. So I then thought I had better finish my speech which I padded by another minute or so and put into some semblance of order. Alex Wilcock had given me some advice that I should make sure I come in under 3 minutes as that would score me some brownie points with the chair so I didn't worry about making it last the full alloted time.

The debate itself was very good with a great opening speech from Bridget Fox who had come back from pounding the pavements of Islington specifically to make it. There were then good contributions from other members. about half way through I then heard "Will Mark Thompson from Bracknell stand by?". My turn came, I went up and delivered my speech. I largely stuck to what I had written only deviating briefly a couple of times. I was a bit nervous, mainly because I was not totally sure that the audience would be 100% receptive to my message given the rather niche nature of the particular issue I was raising. I needn't have worried and got many complimentary comments from people afterwards in person and online. I am not sure the Bob Monkhouse bit came across as I had intended. I was meaning to praise him for having done a great service to archiving but sort of forgot to mention that bit!

I have included a transcript of exactly what I said at the bottom of this post in case you are interested and Alex Foster has an mp3 of the entire debate here.

The most important thing is that the motion passed, almost unanimously (I think there was one vote against). It was good to chat to some of the speakers who had contributed outside just afterwards too.

So I have now lost my conference speaking virginity! Now that I know how it all works I expect I will have no hesitation in popping in a speaker's card in future conferences on issues I feel I have something to say about.

Good morning conference. This motion has lots of good and important stuff in it as you've been hearing and there are a plethora of reasons why you should support it in my view. Here's one more:

I'm probably slightly unusual in that I have a real passion for old television footage; continuity announcements, news, old episodes of long-forgotten and never repeated television shows. Traditionally the only way to watch these was maybe on a third-hand VHS copy or maybe on one that you had taped yourself many years ago or in one of the few museums that are dedicated to this kind of interest.

However with the technology nowadays it's possible for everybody's archives of this nature to be shared with the world. And it might sound like a narrow geeky interest but as far as I am concerned they are snapshots of our history. They form a rich part of our cultural heritage. TV companies don't, and frankly can't make any money out of them any more and yet they are usually still under copyright. The sort of things I am talking about would be covered by lines 36 and 37 of the motion which talks about: "Reforming copyright legislation to allow fair use and release from copyright protection works which are no longer available legally or whose author's can't be identified (orhpan works)".

Instead of enthusiasts worrying that they are breaking the law by sharing this material, instead we could have an army of archivists sharing and preserving this cultural content for future generations.

Bob Monkhouse used to keep a library of video tapes of all sorts of different programmes he had recorded over the years. And indeed television companies used to go to him to recover material that they had been careless enough to lose or wipe. Of course what he was doing was illegal - I don't really think he was aware of that.

Our party has a great tradition of sticking up for minority interests that are doing no harm and this is a real example of such a situation. The law as it stands in this respect serves no good purpose. Lines 36 and 37 would rectify this. And more widely the whole motion is sorely needed to restore confidence in our ability to stand up for people's rights.

I urge you to support it.

Interview on electoral reform with Malcolm Clark, director of Make Votes Count

Last week at the Lib Dem Conference I met up with Malcolm Clark the director of Make Votes Count, a campaign group which seeks to bring together members of all parties and none who wish to see a fair electoral system for Westminster.

He very kindly agreed to be interviewed by me and I have included the footage of this below. I thought he answered my questions very well and we did cover a fair bit of ground. Despite the fact that I am also an advocate of electoral reform myself I did try to challenge him on certain points and ask him some questions that opponents of reform would ask.

I have split the interview into three parts. It is about 18 minutes in total.