Are the Lib Dems really “delivering for Britain”?

Well see for yourself!

The Liberal Democrats have been in government for only eight months, but we have already implemented many of our manifesto policies.

We are serialising a list of these policies and what we are doing to make them happen. The list does not  include those of our policies that are in the coalition agreement but have not yet been implemented – so this list is just the first part of a long line of Liberal Democrat policies to come.

The document is a striking illustration of the influence the Liberal Democrats are having in government.

We shall publish the 66 pledges on which we have taken action so far in the following order and on the following days, as there are too many to publish in one go!

Thu 30 December – Your Money

Fri 31 December – Your Job

Sat 1 January – Your Life

Sun 2 January -Your Health

Mon 3 January – Culture and Sport

Tues 4 January – Your Family

Wed 5 January – Your World

Thu 6 January – Your Community

Fri 7 January – Your Say

Lib Dems delivering for Britain: Part 1. Your Money

Lib Dem Manifesto p.18

“We will increase the income tax threshold to £10,000”

In June’s emergency budget, we raised the tax threshold by £1,000, lifting 880,000 low earners out of tax completely. This will increase each year of the coalition government until it reaches £10,000, which will lift an additional 3 million people out of tax altogether

Lib Dem manifesto p.14

“We will tackle tax avoidance and evasion, with new powers for Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs”

In September, Danny Alexander announced a £900m crackdown on tax avoidance and evasion, expected to raise billions each year by 2014/15 from those who currently avoid paying their fair share of tax.

Lib Dem manifesto p.14

“We will tax capital gains at the same rates as income, so that all the money you make is taxed in the same way”

In June’s emergency budget we increased the rate of Capital Gains Tax to 28% for higher rate taxpayers while keeping it at 18% for basic rate taxpayers. This will raise an extra £1bn and end the disgraceful situation of bankers paying a lower rate of tax than their cleaners.

Lib Dem manifesto p.18

“We will immediately restore the link between the basic state pension and earnings. We will uprate the state pension annually by whichever is the higher of growth in earnings or 2.5%”

The link between pensions and earnings, scrapped by Margaret Thatcher, was restored in the Coalition’s first budget. The annual increase in the state pension will be protected by a ‘triple lock’ – the rise will be in line with earnings, prices, or a 2.5% increase, whichever is the greater.

Lib Dem manifesto p.17

“We will pay down the deficit by saying no to the like-for-like replacement of the Trident nuclear weapons system”

There will be no like-for-like replacement of Trident this Parliament.

Lib Dem manifesto p.16

“We will scrap ID cards”

We have scrapped the ID card programme.

Lib Dem manifesto p.18

“We will give people control over their pension by scrapping the rule that compels you to buy an annuity when you reach age 75”

The Government announced in the Emergency Budget that it will end the effective requirement to purchase an annuity by age 75 from April 2011.

Lib Dem manifesto p.18

“Meeting the government’s obligations towards Equitable Life policy-holders who have suffered loss. We will set up a swift, simple, transparent and fair payment scheme”

We have agreed a deal on Equitable Life which is fair to policy owners and the tax payer. This will finally bring an end to a terrible saga which Labour wouldn’t resolve.

Lib Dem Conference in Liverpool

Ruth has just returned from the Liberal Democrat Party conference in Liverpool.

What a busy week it was. It’s the first time (since the 1930s) where the Liberal Democrats have been a Party of Government, and as a result there was more media interest making this was by far the largest Lib Dem (or Liberal) conference in living memory – with over 7000 people attending.

Conference is a busy mix of debates, speeches, training and “fringe” events. So there was no shortage of events to keep the delegates from Headington and East Oxford busy throughout the week.

Conference kicked off on Saturday with a Conference “rally” with Nick Clegg MP and Art Malik launching the Liberal Democrat support for the “Fairer Votes” referendum next May.

Sunday saw Q&A with the Deputy Prime Minister, where ordinary Party members got an opportunity to ask Nick about his role in Government.

Monday was dominated by the Leader’s speech. Normally we have this at the end of Conference, but Nick Clegg had to go to address the United Nations!

Tuesday’s main speech was from Deputy Leader Simon Hughes MP.

Wednesday the main speech was Vince Cable.

Some in the media probably expected this first conference “in Government” to be a difficult one for the Liberal Democrats. Our experience was the exact opposite.

The Liberal Democrats at long last are delivering on our promises for a fairer Britain, a fair start for children, sorting out the economy and cleaning up politics.  Thousands of new members have joined the Liberal Democrats since the coalition was announced in May and there was a real “buzz” that this is a Party which is up to the challenge of Government and clearing up the mess left by Labour.

Debates in the main conference hall included an important debate on International Development, and one where delegates reaffirmed Party policy that the replacement of Trident missiles should be reconsidered, along with passing a resolution calling for equality in the laws around marriage (for mixed-sex and same-sex couples).

It was also a busy week for delegates’ training – everything from being a better councillor to communicating well with local people.

There is more information on Conference on the national Party website

Can you imagine a life without books?

Have you ever seen a five year old child who’s never seen a book before?

I have. When I helped at the primary school in my local area, I gave a lad a book and he looked at it suspiciously. Then he shook it, to see if it made a noise. When it didn’t, he kicked it, to see if it made a good football. It didn’t.  So he left it on the floor and walked away.

Together with a group of volunteers, I am helping to start a library in a community centre on an inner city estate. It’s a very different sort of library because the people we hope to attract are those who don’t ‘do’ reading, or are scared of filling in forms to join, or of working out complicated numbering systems to find a book or magazines they would like to look at. Our aim is to get books into people’s houses and promote a reading culture in an area of cripplingly poor educational attainment and social deprivation. It’s about adding value to the quality of people’s lives.

The local volunteer helpers at this library like to talk about ‘stuff’, not books. They want their place to be called “Read/Swap”, not The Library. (“Library” is a scary word). They want material to have interesting pictures on the covers. Categories of stuff are called “Things to do outside” (sport, woodwork etc.), “Things to do inside” (cake decorating, sewing etc.), “Stories about people” (Biography), “Stories for grown ups” (Yes! That includes literature as well as novels) etc.

I would like to thank the New Headington Residents’ Association for donating unsold books from their Headington Festival stall to Read/Swap, and for the donations from individual residents who have got to hear about the project. A story on the Read/Swap library is featured in the Oxford Mail on 2 September. If you have any good quality “children’s stuff” or picturebooks that you would care to donate, I should be very grateful to receive them, or they can be left at Rose Hill Community Centre, The Oval, Rose Hill, OX4 4UY  between 10.00 and 12.00 weekday mornings.

Thanks!  Ruth (Chartered Librarian in my working life. Or should I say “Stuffperson”?!)

Criminal justice system

Yesterday I went to an extremely interesting briefing on the criminal justice system. There are more people than ever before in prisons.  Yet there is less recorded crime.

How can this be?

I wonder if the policy makers have looked into the research findings of Bernard Gesch? I attended an Open University course on well-being about three years ago, and Bernard Gesch was a keynote speaker.  He had done some research into diet and re-offending. It was not insignificant research: his cohort size was significant. He had found out that programmes to teach prisoners how to eat healthily were more successful in cutting the rate of re-offending than the normal rehabilitation programmes. His work had been recognised in Scandinavia but not in the UK.

There is a huge groundswell of research to back up the links between antisocial behaviour and fast food.

I wonder if this will be taken up in the forthcoming Local Government Information Unit  report to be launched next week by the All Party Parliamentary Local Government Group at Westminster?

Town Hall disgrace

 This is a personal view from Ruth!

A petition signed by more than 1300 citizens of Oxford pleading for the continuation of the Museum of Oxford was snubbed at the full Council meeting at the Town Hall tonight. The  Labour administration did not allow this issue to be debated further as part of the budget proposals. I was ashamed at this blatant disregard for the views of the City’s residents.

Furthermore, the Labour administration did not allow further debate on other important issues including the refurbishment of the Covered Market, the reinstatement of a street warden post in Northway, area committee discretionary grants weighted according to Indices of Multiple Deprivation, additional citizen advice to cope with financial hardship (at a time when jobs are being cut at BMW), the imposition of business rates on community centres, and the introduction of fuel poverty hardship grants.  Democratically elected members have been denied the right to speak up for their constituents. This was no way to run a council meeting.

For the first time since I was elected a city councillor, I felt appalled at the way council business was conducted tonight. David and I were not even given a chance to speak on issues that matter to the people of Headington.  If you care about democracy, for sanity’s sake vote Lib Dem.

Are your ward councillors effective?

An interesting question! And we’d be curious to hear your answers!

Every four months, David and I analyse all the casework we have been doing in the ward, and we check off the work we have done against the roads in our ‘patch’.  This confirms to us whether or not the work we do on your behalf is carried out principally in some areas of Headington, rather than in others.

When we analysed our casework for the months from May to August, we found that few residents from one area of the ward had contacted us for help or advice.  We prioritised that area of the ward for an early street surgery which was very successful and led to a second walkabout in the locality. We are delighted that many of the people we spoke to in the St. Anne’s Road/Margaret Road/Rock Edge/Gathorne Road area have now volunteered to start up a new residents’ group, and we are helping them set this up.

In the last four months we have noticed an upturn in workload from the areas where we held street surgeries, so these events have been successful in raising people’s awareness of who we are and what we do.  We intend to continue with these, and one area we would like to focus on in the forthcoming four months is New Headington.

If you would like a copy of our workload breakdown by roads in the ward, please contact us and we will send you a copy

City Council dilemma on making planning decisions

Plans for the Kennet Valley 'mini-town' have temporarily been withdrawn

Lib Dems believe that planning decisions should be made as close as possible to the people affected

An inadequately argued proposal from the Labour administration on Oxford City Council, to remove the right of area committees to make decisions on planning applications in their areas, and to return to centralised decision-making, was so fundamentally amended at the last full council meeting that the council is now in limbo.

Since 2002, when a Lib Dem-led administration set up six area committees to make decisions affecting their own communities – including deciding key planning applications – people in Oxford have found that they can get much more involved with matters which concern them, and can influence their councillors much more effectively. Attendance at area committee meetings is regularly many times higher than was the case with centralised planning committees.

But the current Labour administration has vowed to change this, and return to a system of decision-making in the Town Hall by councillors who often know very little about the likely effect of their decisions on the people living closest. Said Lib Dem group leader Cllr David Rundle: “We have protested loudly that there has been very little consultation about this change with the communities affected. Representatives of many groups in the city have come forward in recent days to object, but they have been ignored by the Labour group. This flies in the face of their own Government’s claims to want to increase the powers of communities to decide things which affect them.”

Added Cllr Rundle: “Labour claim that the change will save the council money, but their financial case is so full of holes that they dare not let the scrutiny committee, or area committees, check it out. We have heard a succession of contradictory and false statements by the portfolio holder, and it is clear that the whole idea is being pursued for reasons which have nothing to do with community empowerment or improving quality of decisions.”

As a result of amendments agreed in council, the council may now allow area committees to decide for themselves whether they want to retain planning powers. People in those areas of the city with Labour-dominated area committees would find their planning decisions being made centrally, with limited opportunities to hold their councillors to account.

Will they listen? Well…they’re going to have to!

STOP PRESS

Councillors voted tonight and amended the recommendation on ways to handle planning decisions as follows:

Area Committees to be given the choice of whether or not they continue
to determine planning applications

So this means the paper will be referred through to area committee meetings for further debate, and if councillors at Area Committees vote against continuing to determine planning applications, they will have to do so in front of their own residents and residents’ associations who will be able to petition them and challenge them

Basically this will mean that, if councillors vote according to party lines then NEAC is likely to meet only every two months and won’t determine its own planning decisions, as I understand it, unless a couple of Labour councillors are brave enough to defy the whip.

This may mean that there will be disparities between the way planning decisions are made in different areas of Oxford

David and I feel that this outcome is better than we expected. We are really pleased that residents will now have the opportunity to have their say and we thank all those Headington residents and the Highfield Residents’ Association for taking such a spirited stand on the need for public consultation and partnership