AV - update from an expert

46 minutes in to "Sunday Supplement" from Radio Wales this morning, (seven days left to listen), you will hear Anthony Green, a political affairs analyst for ABC in Australia, where, of course, AV is the most common system. He reinforces the rebuttals of the No2AV campaign which I listed at http://franklittle.mycouncillor.org.uk/2011/04/20/no2av-lies/ but corrects a couple of the assumptions I made there. The reason for the infrequency of hung parliaments in the national House of Representatives and the tendency to support the status quo is, he reckons, the legal compulsion to vote.

Resistance to directly-elected police commissioners grows

The Welsh Liberal Democrat candidate in Wrexham and former Deputy Chief Constable of North Wales Police, Bill Brereton has welcomed moves by the Liberal Democrats in Westminster to disrupt plans to introduce elected police commissioners in Wales.

Liberal Democrat peers, led by Baroness Sally Hamwee, want the idea at least piloted for three years before it is implemented nationwide and say they will disrupt the timetable by introducing amendments to legislation.

Mr Brereton is quoted: "I am already on record expressing my concerns about the Conservative proposals for Police Commissioners. I am deeply worried that elected police commissioners will take policing back 200 years. These proposals would put far too much power in the hands of a single individual and politicise the police service. The Liberal Democrats in Westminster are acting as an effective brake against the worst excesses of the Conservatives.”

The BBC and Daily Post reports are here and here. My previous comment is here.

Before the Butler Act, there was the Fisher Act

H.A.L.Fisher was one of those names of Edwardian worthies which impinged on my political consciousness without making a great impression. However, this article by Mark Pack puts his great contribution to education in England and Wales in perspective. Oldershaw School, my alma mater, may well have been the first of many to benefit from the Act seen through to the Statute Book by Fisher in Lloyd George's war-time coalition government.

The closing paragraphs of Mark's piece particularly struck me:

The Fisher Act’s achievements spanned the full age range for children, from the first legislative provision for nursery schools through to the first national government funding of universities. Post-First World War austerity saw many of the provisions delayed, with the 1944 Butler Act and then the post-Second World War prosperity only eventually delivering them.

Despite the path-breaking role for national, central government in Fisher’s reforms he retained a strong belief in the power of local variation and the resulting “wholesome variety of experimentation”. He also strongly believed that people had to be understood as social animals, with a need and desire to work together. As Michael Steed puts it,

He argued for local feeling as the basis of education in citizenship; affection for school, village, town or country is the basis from which loyalty to society and patriotism develops. He praised a French writer for his ‘gospel of provincial culture’ against the stultifying uniformity of French education and rejoiced in the local autonomy entrenched in his Education Act.

At a time when the Welsh Assembly Government needs to drive educational standards to raise Wales to a level where it can attract inward investment again, while avoiding micro-management from the centre, these words strike a contemporary chord.

Labour's thick-eared campaigning

Peter Black draws attention to Matt Withers' assertion that Labour's "whole campaign – the line pushed at every opportunity – is that the election should be used 'to send a message to David Cameron and Nick Clegg', the implication being that, on May 6, the pair will awake to discover Labour has a 31-seat majority".

Well, that strategy has worked only partially in England. In council by-elections, Labour has piled on extra votes where the party was doing well anyway. Elsewhere, voters have judged the candidates on what is best for them locally. (This was a key point of Nick Clegg's recent rallying call for the English local elections - that LibDem-held councils have not closed facilities to the extent that Labour and Tory ones have.)  Even where wider issues were considered, voters have given Liberal Democrats credit for reining in the Conservatives in government and in ensuring that some key points of our manifesto - notably the guarantee to state pensioners - were included in the coalition programme.

The result is that Liberal Democrats show a net gain in council by-elections held in Britain since the general election.

Welsh Labour is clearly working on the assumption that voters here are more ignorant than those in England. It is a mistaken and disrespectful strategy.

Why Labour members should switch to the Liberal Democrats

This article on LibDem Voice is worth quoting in full, the couple of references to England-only policy notwithstanding:

If you’re Labour, and want to be an MP in a safe seat, switching to the Lib Dems would be a bad move. Perhaps you like authoritarian policies on law and order, and prefer to avoid difficult decisions on the deficit. If so, the Lib Dems isn’t the party for you.

But maybe you think politics isn’t black and white, that there is good and bad in all the parties, and so working together is a good thing. Perhaps you think that the government should do what will work on law and order, rather than pander to the tabloid press, and that we shouldn’t run a deficit, to live better at our children’s expense.

In 1997, many took a good long look at the Labour party and liked what they saw: the party seemed to be committed to financial prudence, to reforming our outdated constitution and increasing personal liberty.

Today, the picture is very different.

Labour fuelled a consumer debt bubble, ran large deficits in a boom, and failed to regulate the banks properly. Its constitutional reform programme stalled after the first term, and it pandered to the tabloid press with ever more authoritarian measures.

After the last election, with 57 MPs, the Liberal Democrats had a limited hand. But unlike Labour in 1997, 2001 and 2005, they have actually delivered a referendum on AV. Nick Clegg has recently announced progress towards an elected House of Lords. Lib Dem influence has allowed moderate Tories like Ken Clarke to introduce progressive policies** that would have been unthinkable under either the Conservatives or Labour.

Opponents of the Lib Dems constantly refer to Tory policies which we’ve failed to stop, and to the austerity caused by the deficit. But considering the massive deficit, and that the Tories have over five times as many MPs, it’s amazing what has been achieved.

The Lib Dems are attacking the poverty trap, taking many of the low paid out of income tax and giving vital backing to IDS’s Universal Credit. We’ve restored the link between pensions and earnings, and we’re changing the funding of schools to give an incentive to take on pupils from poor backgrounds*.

And that’s just the headline grabbing initiatives. By the end of this parliament, there will be a myriad of low profile policies in place which help the underprivileged, protect our freedoms and enhance our democracy. Behind the scenes, our MPs and peers are battling to limit Tory initiatives which are poorly thought out or which hurt the poor. They don’t win every battle, but they’ve had a lot of success.

Some Labour supporters pretend that the structural deficit can be fixed with cyclic growth. They argue that Labour cuts wouldn’t hurt, despite what we can see happening in local government.

But perhaps there are Labour members reading this article who know better. Maybe you voted for David Miliband, because you wanted a leader who would be more honest about the country’s financial problems. Perhaps you are appalled to see Ed Balls as Shadow Chancellor.

Loyalty to friends and colleagues is commendable. But, if you believe both in social justice and financial responsibility, you have an alternative.

Joining the Lib Dems won’t be popular, and working to deal with the most serious peacetime deficit on record will be incredibly difficult. But anyone who joins out of both idealism and realism has a lot to contribute. And that is reward in itself.

* Welsh Liberal Democrats are offering this in their manifesto for the Welsh general election

** Ken Clarke is not totally credible as a liberal. His conversion to alternatives to prison seems to be driven mostly by economic expediency.

We must push people into work, says prime minister

The Prime Minister said there was a real chance ' to cut welfare dependency and push into work ''the human faces of the patchwork economy''.

But this is the Labor prime minister of Australia, quoted in the Sydney Morning Herald.

Manifesto now on-line

http://www.welshlibdems.org.uk/en/document/wales-can-do-better-manifesto-2011.pdf

 - and there is less than 24 hours left to register if you need a postal vote and are not already registered:
http://www.aboutmyvote.co.uk/how_do_i_vote/voting_by_post.aspx

Streamlining European contract law should help UK SMEs

The European Parliament's Legal Affairs Committee (JURI) yesterday voted overwhelmingly in favour of a draft report on European contract law which is aimed at strengthening cross-border competition and opening up the full potential of the EU's internal market for businesses and consumers.
 
Commenting after the vote, Liberal Democrat MEP Diana Wallis, who drafted the report on policy options for progress towards a European Contract law, said:
 
"At the moment, businesses, in particular small and medium sized ones, are discouraged from engaging in cross-border trade because of the divergences in national contract law.

"Today's vote was an important step towards introducing a simplified and flexible optional instrument which will enlarge the choice of parties when drawing up contracts, provide legal certainty across borders and can be put in place relatively quickly. This could be a real contribution to the Commission's 'justice for growth' programme to get the EU towards its 20/20 economic goals."

"Retailers and consumers alike will be able to benefit from a flexible European contract law option. It is important now to ensure that any new rules created are simple, comprehensible and ready for use."