Headington residents have asked David and me how far the coalition agreement satisfies the Lib Dem manifesto pledges for which they voted.

Here are links to the two most important documents, the coalition agreement and the manifesto, so that you can see for yourself how far Lib Dem objectives have been achieved through negotiation

I am attending a special conference on Sunday afternoon at the NEC in Birmingham as a voting rep for our constituency and it will be interesting to join in the debate. I confess that I had initial worries about the likely content of any coalition agreement with the Conservative Party as I felt that there was insufficient common ground between the policies and manifesto pledges of the Tories and the Lib Dems to make a coalition work:  now that I have read the negotiations agreements, I feel reassured that the coalition will enable the Lib Dems to make  substantial progress in achieving much of what we set out to do at the start of our election campaign, although there are clearly some issues on which we disagree profoundly! I think the Lib Dem negotiating team has done a good job. See what you think! We welcome your views.

The policy agreement for the new Government is full of Liberal Democrat policies. It is a real chance to put into action the ideas that we have campaigned for.

A Fair Start for Children

• Introduce a Pupil Premium to give all children a fair start.

Fairer taxes and Economic Reform

• A substantial increase in the personal allowance from April 2011 with a longer term policy objective of further increasing the personal allowance to £10,000, making further real terms steps each year towards this objective
• Reform of the banking system, ensuring a flow of lending to businesses and a Banking Levy. An independent commission on separating retail and investment banking.
• Capital Gains Tax reform

Fair Politics

• Fixed-term parliaments and a referendum on electoral reform for the House of Commons.
• A power of recall, allowing voters to force a by-election where an MP was found to have engaged in serious wrongdoing.
• A wholly or mainly elected House of Lords on the basis of proportional representation.
• Giving Parliament control of its own agenda so that all bills are properly debated.
• Enacting the Calman Commission proposals and a referendum on further Welsh devolution.
• A statutory register of lobbyists.
• A limit on political donations and reform of party funding in order to remove big money from politics.
• Radical devolution of power and greater financial autonomy to local government and community groups.

A fair and sustainable future

• Establish a smart electricity grid and the roll-out of smart meters.
• Establish feed-in tariff systems in electricity
• A huge increase in energy from waste through anaerobic digestion.
• The creation of a green investment bank.
• The provision of home energy improvement paid for by the savings from lower energy bills.
• Retention of energy performance certificates when HIPs are scrapped.
• Measures to encourage marine energy.
• The establishment of an emissions performance standard that will prevent coal-fired power stations being built unless they are equipped with sufficient CCS to meet the emissions performance standard.
• Establish a high-speed rail network.
• Cancel the third runway at Heathrow and refuse additional runways at Gatwick and Stansted.
• Replace the Air Passenger Duty with a ‘per plane’ duty.
• The provision of a floor price for carbon, as well as efforts to persuade the EU to move towards full auctioning of ETS permits.
• Make the import or possession of illegal timber a criminal offence.
• Promote green spaces and wildlife corridors in order to halt the loss of habitats and restore biodiversity.
• Reduce central government carbon emissions by 10 per cent within 12 months.
• Increase the target for energy from renewable sources.
  

Pensions

• Restoration of the earnings link for the basic state pension from April 2011 with a “triple guarantee” that pensions are raised by the higher of earnings, prices or 2.5%.
• Phase out the default retirement age and end the rules requiring compulsory annuitisation at 75.
• Implement the Parliamentary and Health Ombudsman’s recommendation to make fair and transparent payments to Equitable Life policyholders.

Civil Liberties

• Scrap the ID card scheme, the National Identity register, the next generation of biometric passports and the ContactPoint Database.
• Outlaw the finger-printing of children at school without parental permission.
• Extend the scope of the Freedom of Information Act to provide greater transparency.
• Adopt the Scottish approach to stopping retention of innocent people’s DNA on the DNA database.
• Defend trial by jury.
• Restore rights to non-violent protest.
• A review of libel laws to protect freedom of speech.
• Safeguards against the misuse of anti-terrorism legislation.
• Further regulation of CCTV.
• Ending of storage of internet and email records without good reason.
• A new mechanism to prevent the proliferation of unnecessary new criminal offences.
• End the detention of children for immigration purposes.

For the full text of the Conservative – Liberal Democrat coalition negotiations agreements, click here

Follow this link to the Lib Dem manifesto.

4 steps to a fairer Britain

fair taxes that put money back in your pocket

a fair chance for every child

a fair future, creating jobs by making Britain greener

a fair deal by cleaning up politics

The Liberal Democrats have come out top in a poll for Times Higher Education, the leading weekly publication for workers in higher education . The poll asked respondents their voting intention and who had the best policies on higher education. The Lib Dems topped the voting intention poll with 40%, with Labour on 33% and the Conservatives on 15%. Even more respondents felt that the Liberal Democrats had the best policies on higher education with 49% choosing the Lib Dem policies over 26% for Labour and 14% for Conservative.

For more information, and a link to the Times Higher Education poll results, click here.