The stringency of the austerity
measures....Brexit.......The Housing Crisis.....issues that are
discussed by people on a daily basis at the moment, whether explicitly or implicitly. Half the time it
can feel like the structural problems connected with our society:
inequality of opportunity, wage stagnation, low productivity, a
growing demand for public services can seem insurmountable.
Disengagement with politics remains an issue, particularly for
Millennials and Generation Z (16-35). Hope for a brighter, more equal
future flickers rather than burns brightly, which is why it's more
important than ever to be engaging with voters and non-voters through
the dissemination of an inclusive, ambitious and progressive vision
for the country that will try to address our structural challenges
head-on. I believe the party that can best articulate such a vision
at a grassroots local and national level will have a real chance of
winning a majority at the next General Election. The question is,
whether there is a party out there who can listen to the electorate
AND non-electorate, build political engagement and articulate a
vision, in the shadow of disruptive Brexit negotiations.
This Mothering Sunday afternoon I
decided to tune into Sir Vince Cable's (the leader of the Liberal
Democrats) closing speech to Spring Conference delegates in
Southport, which was streamed live via Periscope and also
simultaneously disseminated via YouTube and Facebook live. I was
probably only one of a couple thousand viewers who made such a
decision but I didn't feel it was an entirely wasted activity. Cable
came across as clearly passionate about campaigning for an
#ExitFromBrexit (i.e. a referendum on the terms of the Brexit deal
with an option to Remain in the EU) and well-informed about current
domestic issues and the need for pragmatic, wide-ranging solutions.
Yet I did wonder whether he was already preaching to the converted,
although it is important to empower them to go out campaigning in
constituencies across the UK in all kinds of places (including care
homes, Mr Cable!!) I also thought his comments RE Leave voters were a little hap-hazard: trying to reduce the reasons why older voters backed Brexit down to one reason: nostalgia for a less diverse Britain isn't founded entirely on evidence- a minority of voters may have done so but they are exactly that, a minority. Hmm...Anyways onto the policy announcements...
Education:
The Lib Dems certainly have a number of
policies that I believe would appeal to the electorate at large:
protecting per pupil funding in real terms for all pupils
including in Further Education, protecting
the Pupil Premium, increasing the Early Years Pupil Premium by £700
to £1000 a year, requiring teachers in state schools to have QTS
(Qualified Teaching Status) or working towards it and providing at
least 50 hours of Continuing Professional Development per year for
teachers. In addition to these, the Lib Dems are proposing quite
radical changes: abolishing Key Stage 1 and 2 SATs with moderated
teacher assessments and a standardisation test, abolishing Regional
Schools Commissioners, making local authorities responsible for
planning, exclusions and admissions and replacing Ofsted with a new
inspection system, looking at emotional wellbeing of teachers and
students in addition to test scores. I'm also glad to see SEND
pupils' needs mentioned, with a desire to reduce the number of SEND
pupils being excluded from mainstream school, and to see the proposal
for a named person (a pastoral team lead preferably) who is
responsible for craft whole school policies and approaches towards
mental health.
I
agree with the idea behind “Every Child Empowered”, ensuring that
children and young people in constituencies across the country,
including in deprived wards and rural villages and hamlets get access
to the skills they need to prepare them fully for adult life: who can
argue against providing First Aid training in schools and colleges if
it means it reduces the amount of unnecessary GP appointments, A&E
admissions and calls to NHS helplines? Who can argue with introducing
comprehensive LGBTQIA+ Relationships and Sex Education if it helps to
reduce instances of sexual assault, abuse, under-age pregnancies or
misinformation about gender identities? Who can argue against
teaching children about budgeting and debt management if it allows
them to make informed decisions about borrowing and reduces the
number of people resorting to loan sharks? Financial literacy, First
Aid and RSE should all be on the National Curriculum, as part of the
PSHE and Citizenship programmes of study and there should be funding
given by Government directly to schools to allow for external
providers to deliver sessions, taking the pressure off teachers who
may not have the time to be researching such topics in depth with
students. Such a broad curriculum, a “Curriculum for Life” should
be required to be taught in academy and free schools and public
schools should be encouraged to reform their curriculum offer.
There's
also talk of introducing Personal Education Accounts, one for 16-18
year olds and one specifically for adult learners to help pay for
training and skills courses delivered online, at local FE colleges
and in community centres and libraries will help people access
quality courses and aid their career development. Cable announced
in his speech that a Commission on Life Long Learning will be set up
to explore this policy idea further.
There's
a lot of detailed recommendations and I'd refer those interested in
finding out more to check out the policy document here:
https://d3n8a8pro7vhmx.cloudfront.net/libdems/pages/42359/attachments/original/1518080686/Every_Child_Empowered_-_Policy_Paper.pdf?1518080686
NHS, Social Care and Mental Health:
Our NHS remains greatly under-pressure
and little practical action has been taken by the Tory Government to
try and alleviate such pressures. The Tories may claim that health
spending is at record levels but it has not been enough given the
rise in demand for services. They and previous governments have
failed to prepare adequately for the ageing of our population. A&E
waiting times are now the highest they have ever been: only 85% of
patients in England were seen under 4 hours. The United Lincolnshire
Hospitals Trust missed its waiting time target by 25%
and
has missed every target for A&E and cancer care for every year
since 2014. For Lincolnshire residents, this is extremely concerning.
The Lib Dems F18: The
NHS at 70
motion recognises the pressure that NHS Trusts are under and are
calling on the Tory Government to provide £4bn that the NHS will
need for 2018/19 financial year, with an addition £2bn of funding
given to local authorities to fund social care. Additionally, the Lib
Dems want to see the introduction of a special NHS passport to allow
59,000 NHS professionals from the EU an automatic guaranteed right to
remain following Brexit and for bursaries for student nurses to be
reintroducted to encourage more British people to decide to train to
be a nurse and thereby reduce the nursing shortage in hospitals and
care homes across the country.
Mental
Health care has not improved satisfactory under this Tory Government.
Waiting times for referral remain far too long, demand for Child and
Adolescent Mental Health Services has increased, with 1 in 5 children
who have been referred to local CAMHS services being rejected for
treatment :that's a total of 39,652 children
(https://www.nspcc.org.uk/what-we-do/news-opinion/1-in-five-5-children-referred-to-local-mental-health-services-are-rejected-for-treatment/).
This is concerning given that 1 in 10 children in England between the
ages of 5 and 16 suffer from a mental health condition and up to 20%
of children will experience a mental health condition in any given
year. NHS CAMHS are currently only funded to meet 25% of cases but
that is expected to increase to 33% by 2021. The Government has
committed to recruiting 1,700 more therapists and supervisors and to
ensure that an extra 70,000 children and young people are able to
access CAMHS but it is unclear whether such targets will be achieved.
Norman
Lamb has been a passionate campaigner for better Mental Health
service provision and thus I'm not surprised to see some concrete
policy suggestions being offered in F18: the earmarked £1.3bn of
spending being brought forward to improve mental health service
provision, ending out-of-area placements, very important for people
living in rural areas such as Metheringham and the protection and
promotion of community pharmacies. Perhaps the most radical
suggestion, and one that has been made by Lamb for years, is the
creation of a cross-party committee to look at funding the NHS and
Social Care system long term. Raising the level of income tax by 1p
in the £1 to fund social care short-term would help alleviate
funding pressures but there has to be a sustainable long-term
solution found and it's in the political interests of all parties
concerned to find such a solution. Let's see if that happens anytime
soon. I'm not holding my breath.
Housing:
Britain needs a housing revolution in
order to ensure that every person has a suitable and safe roof over
their head regardless of their socio-economic circumstances. It's
ridiculous to think that the peak of house building in the UK was
1968 and that in 2018 we
face a situation where 125,000 children are classed as homeless and
rough sleepers are dying out on our streets, despite the best efforts
of compassionate individuals and organisations such as The Nomad
Trust, LEAP and Lincolnshire YMCA to help them. Access to
decent housing should be viewed as a human right. A house should be a
place to call home, not an investment to feel obligated to upkeep
with no families living in it to bring the place to life. Yet the
Government (when in coalition with the Lib Dems between 2010 and 2015
and afterwards) more than halved the state housing development budget
for local councils and housing associations from £11bn in 2010 to
£5.3bn last year. The Local Government Association revealed that local councils and their communities
had granted nearly twice as many planning permissions (321,000) as
the number of new homes that had been completed (183,000) last year.
The issue is not with planning permission being granted, it's with
housebuilders not building enough homes once they have planning
permission granted.
It's good to see the Lib Dems reaffirm
their commitment to building 300,000 houses a year in England by 2022
and to scrapping the draconian housing borrowing cap. I agree with
the Lib Dems that local authorities must be able to access loans to
build and invest in quality affordable and social housing, including
“borrowing from the Public Works Loan board to buy land for housing
and build affordable and social housing on the same terms they are
currently borrowing to purchase commercial property”
(https://www.libdems.org.uk/spring-18-f4-local-government-housing).
I also believe local authorities should be given the right to scrap
Right To Buy in their area, when assessments of local need have been
carried out. Any proceeds from the sale of council houses by local
authorities should be used to find new social housing for homeless
families and I'd argue also to acquire adapted social housing for
disabled residents who have been on the council house waiting list
for more than 2 years. Councils should also have powers to monitor
housing developments, to ensure that “poor door” practices are
abandoned. Redevelopment of housing estates must not lead to a
decrease in social housing: one of the best ways to prevent this from
happening would be to introduce a (I believe legal) “right of
return for all residents on the same terms as their pre-regeneration
tenancy”
(https://www.libdems.org.uk/spring-18-f4-local-government-housing).
Such policies would benefit residents first and foremost and help to
ensure community cohesion is maintained post the end of regeneration
projects. I'd only add that PM May's suggestion of changing the use
of empty retail properties in inner city areas would be beneficial to
adopt and that the EDMO legislation strengthening should allow local
authorities the opportunity to compulsory purchase empty retail
property for the expressed purpose of creating social housing for the
homeless and low income families with children. Landbanking is also
an issue that needs to be resolved: it's not right that developers
can be allowed to purchase land for the specific purpose of building
new homes and then not start to build them within a 2 year period.
Perhaps there needs to be compulsory purchases made if landbanking
continued beyond a 2 year slot.
Rural Affairs:
I have spoken to numerous rural voters
who do feel the issues that they raise are being ignored by the
current Conservative government. In Lincolnshire, we have had
streetlights turned off in villages and hamlets across the county and
it has made some residents feel too scared to walk to the pub or to
visit their friends at night for fear of being mugged, assaulted or
worse. The safety of our county's residents has to trump
ideologically driven efficiency savings but our Conservative
controlled County Council has failed to listen to concerns and
reverse the policy in full. I've spoken to rural residents in the
Sleaford and North Hykeham constituency worried about the continued
closure of Grantham A&E at night and wondering whether it will
eventually be downgraded or closed through the implementation of
Lincolnshire's Sustainability and Transformation Plans, forcing them
to travel for an hour just to get medical attention at Lincoln County
Hospital's already under-pressure A&E. I'm pleased to see the
adoption of motion F8: A Rural Future: Time To Act by conference
delegates, which includes a specific commitment to “increasing the
availability of affordable housing” through the reduction of second
home ownership (allowing local authorities to increase tax on second
homes through a stamp duty surcharge or an increase in council tax
rate). The installation of Superfast broadband which is defined as
being “over 30 Mbps download speeds and 6 Mbps upload speeds”
should continue to be a priority, so businesses and households in
Chapel St Leonards have an ability to access the internet at the same
speed as those based in Lincoln.
I would like to see the introduction of
a Young Person's Bus Discount Card, for all young people aged 16-21
living in rural areas which provides then with 2/3 discount on bus
fares. This will allow young people to be able to afford to travel
across Lincolnshire, visiting friends, joining community youth clubs
and attending training sessions, which will help reduce their sense
of rural isolation. I agree with the notion of creating more
community centre hubs providing a multitude of services to residents
but would like to see investment come from central Government in
order to facilitate such creation. Local authorities are
overstretched and do not have the financial resources spare to
shoulder the majority of the financial burden for these projects.
I agree with proposals to increase
Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) payments to help maintain woodlands
and forests, reduce soil erosion and uphold animal rights. Investment
in flood prevention in rural constituencies and launching a National
Fund for Coastal Change are also sentient policy ideas which clearly
demonstrate eco-friendly credentials.
Voter Engagement and Equality and
Diversity:
Cable talked of the need to improve
diversity within the Lib Dem party in his speech, a comment which I
respect him for making and one which I hope will be taken on board.
The Lib Dems are doing well in local council by-elections across the
country at the country at the moment, with residents listening to key policy ideas and buying into their
vision for an open, tolerant and inclusive society. Credit for this
success has to go to local campaigners, councillors and candidates
who engage with voters and current non-voters on the doorstep,
listening to their concerns and not immediately judging them their
Brexit vote. This work needs to continue to grow in order to increase
the number of MPs at the next General Election. Increasing awareness
of the policy platform is half the battle. I'd argue that Lib Dems
should set up more central meetings, held at village halls and
community centres, liaising with local third sector organisations and
allowing people to be honest, open and frank about their views.
Organising meetings in care homes would be innovative and demonstrate
that the party cares about all voters: after all, Brexit may lead to
a reduction in sustainability staffing levels which will then affect
them directly.
It was great to see a renewed
commitment to advocating for electoral reform, making the case for
the introduction of a right to vote for 16 and 17 year olds and
supporting the private members bill put forward by Labour MP Peter
Kyle. There's also a campaign being run to raise awareness that EU
citizens can vote in local elections. More campaigning should be done
on the need for House of Lords reform to build support for the
creation of an elected House of Lords (or change of name...e.g. to a
Senate or something similar). Supporting devolution of powers to
local authorities (including those on housing proposed under F4)
should be a priority too and may win over more skeptical voters.
It was amazing to see via Twitter and
by watching some of the Spring Conference via YouTube the wealth of
speakers who had been invited to talk about their personal
experiences and ideas for the future. A motion put forward by Jess
Insall, a member of LGBT+ Lib Dems on gender neutral school uniforms,
arguing that schools should present uniform options that can be worn
by pupils of all genders was praised and passed by delegates for
being inclusive and feminist. There was no mainstream platforming of
transphobic views masquerading as real feminism by trans exclusionary
radical feminists. The party can build on their record for inclusion
through further engagement with working class rural people,
especially in constituencies such as Sleaford and North Hykeham,
Gainsborough, Grantham and Stamford, Boston and Skegness and Louth
and Horncastle. Engagement with habitual Conservative voters through
promotion of rural policies and building up a reputation for economic
credibility will also prove fruitful, as will engagement with
suburban voters particularly with a number of young, passionate and
thoughtful candidates standing in this year's local elections.
Back Away from the Brexit:
Of all the policy suggestions and
motions passed at this year's Spring Conference, perhaps the one
which will garner the most attention from ordinary people and the
mainstream leader is the Lib Dem's commitment to an Exit From Brexit.
I've spoken to voters and non-voters across Lincolnshire over the
past few months about their views towards Brexit and it's clear there
is still a lot of passion emanating from Remain and Leave voters,
with no overall consensus as to the best way forward. Non- referendum
voters feel that the debate hasn't moved on since June 2016 and a
number are concerned about the potential economic and cultural
effects Brexit may have on Lincoln and Lincolnshire. Even the most
ardent of Leave voters I have spoken to have occasionally expressed
their concerns. I remember talking to a very forthright retired
plasterer, who believed in the need to take back control of
sovereignty from Brussels but worried about whether his pension
contributions could decrease if the Tory government did not secure “
more beneficial” free trade agreements with the US Trump
administration or Commonwealth member states. A young lady, who works
at a care home in Lincoln and voted Leave in 2016 told me that she
was worried her workload may increase if the home couldn't replace
the carers who had decided to leave the UK or were thinking of
leaving the UK once Brexit happens afters March 2019. A young guy who
is a very committed Conservative didn't like the fact that food
prices may rise following a No-Deal situation, where the UK will have
to rely on World Trade Organisation (WTO) rules in order to keep our
economy alive. For certain elements of the mainstream media and Tory
Brexiteers to deny such levels of anxiety about the potential
consequences of Brexit exist, even in Leave voting areas such as
Lincoln, is to deny the reality of the situation. It is inevitable
that some voters will decide to change their mind, and would vote
Remain in another referendum. More importantly though it is vital
that the main political parties have strategic plans in place that
will help mitigate any potential negative economic and cultural
effects of Brexit. The Tories never talk of such plans, only making
passing references to their Impact War Chest and hoping that a deal
can be secured that allows them to maintain a veneer of economic
competence. The Lib Dems have spelled out some policies but I
personally feel more work needs to be done to craft policies that can
be enacted in the event Brexit does happen. Better to be prepared and
hope that Brexit doesn't happen in a No Deal form or even better,
doesn't happen, than to fail to prepare for the No Deal Brexit.
Perhaps such policies will be formulated and announced once a draft
trade deal has been secured by Double D et al. But don't hold your
breath that they can secure a trade deal, let alone a good one.
Whichever way Brexit is spun, whether
it's a “take back control” or a “jobs first” type, it looks
like it is going to lead to a contraction of the economy and
potentially further cuts to our public services. As Mr Cable made
clear in his speech, such measures would hurt the most vulnerable in
our society who rely on effective public service provision for
support. Jeremy Corbyn has pretty much committed the Labour Party to
leaving the Single Market, remains very cagey about what a Customs
Union that's not the current EU Customs Union would look like and has
dismissed out of hand calls for a referendum on the Brexit deal. I
don't know whether the Labour position will evolve as we get closer
to the day of Brexit but one positive advantage for the Lib Dems is
that they have a very clear Brexit position and are not afraid to
stick to it.
Conclusion:
The Lib Dems have a lot of work to do
if they are to regain seats at the next General Election. The
Survation poll currently puts them at 9%, whilst Labour have seen a
surge in support, placing them at 44%
(http://uk.businessinsider.com/survation-labour-popularity-surge-7-point-lead-poll-conservatives-2018-3).
Such poll numbers may be optimistic in both cases and may change
upwards or downwards as the nature of the Brexit deal becomes clear.
The motions passed at the Lib Dem Spring Conference, and the passion
for a liberal future expressed by speakers, including Mr Cable may go
some way towards changing voters' minds. It'll be interesting to see
what new policies are developed in time for the Autumn
Conference....unless a General Election happens before then. Who
knows in our currently unpredictable political climate?
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