Planning Reforms: Greg Clark Admits Changes 'Could Have Been Clearer'

Greg Clark has admitted that there are flaws in the Government’s controversial proposals to reform the planning system.












Greg Clark MP, planning minister, signalled there would be changes to the National Planning Policy Framework.

In the first public debate since Prime Minister David Cameron intervened in the row earlier this week, the planning minister said that some of the proposals on brownfield land, housing targets and "sustainable development" could have been clearer.

The comments provide clues to how ministers are likely to amend the controversial National draft Planning Policy Framework, which has attracted fierce criticism from countryside campaigners, after a consultation closes in the middle of next month.

Mr Clark told a seminar at a London law firm organised by the British Property Federation that it was difficult to express the Government's intentions at the same time as reducing bureaucracy.

He said: “When you distil more than 1,000 pages to around 50 ... Inevitably it is the case not every thing is expressed in the clearest way possible but that does not signal malign intent or an intention to subvert the process."

Protesters have accused the Government of trying to rip up the planning system by removing protections for the countryside in favour of development.

Mr Clark strongly denied this suggestion and said that the Government was willing to listen to critics. He said: “This is a genuine consultation. It does not imply any agenda of the Government to change the nature of planning.”

Afterwards, Mr Clark told The Daily Telegraph: “Any consultation wants to make sure that everything are expressed more clearly. My view is that these safeguards are there and are clear to all, but if people think they are not we will respond to them.”

Mr Clark is pushing through plans to replace 1,300 pages of planning regulations in England with just 52 pages in the new NPPF.

The framework writes into the rules a new “presumption in favour of sustainable development”, without defining clearly what it means, leading campaigners to fear that large areas of England will be concreted over.

Mr Clark added: "The intention of the presumption in favour of sustainable development is not to provide a loophole where alien developments will be imposed on the community rather the NPPF wants to replicate the kind of policies a reasonable local authority would put in place."

Campaigners, led by the National Trust, have suggested the Government has tried to change the planning system so that it is biased in favour of promoting growth, rather than the environment.

The Daily Telegraph is also running a campaign called Hands Off Our Land urging the Government to reconsider its plans.

There was a breakthrough this week when Mr Cameron personally assured the Trust in a letter to its director general Dame Fiona Reynolds that the environmental benefits of developments would be assessed before new projects were given permission.

Mr Clark hinted at some of the clarifications that he was planning as part of the Government’s response to the consultation, which ends on Oct 17.

He suggested that a presumption to build on previously developed areas or “brownfield” sites, which is in current rules, would be written back into the guidance.

He said: “It was never my intention, and it certainly was not the Government’s intention, to depart from the obviously desirable situation in which derelict land should be brought back into use. That is always the intention.”

“If not mentioning brownfield at all leads people to conclude there is a different intention, then without pre-empting the consultation, that is something that I am hearing being said.”

Mr Clark also said he had been misunderstood over targets for local authorities to provide 20 per cent more land for building.

He said that this does not necessarily mean that more houses will be built, but simply that more options for development are made available. The intention was “not to have more homes built than the locality needs”, he said.

Mr Clark added: “Not every site that is earmarked for development turns out in practice to be developable. Problems arise. So you always need to have something of a buffer to make sure that the number you plan for is developable.”

He also admitted the “presumption in favour of sustainable development” was open to interpretation and needed further work.

He said: “I think the presumption in favour of sustainable development requires sustainability to be there, to be guaranteed but we will listen (to the consultation).”

Campaigners welcomed the softening in tone in the minister’s comments. Shaun Spiers, chief executive of the Campaign to Protect Rural England, said: “Mr Clark was acknowledging that there are clearly huge parts that can be improved. It helps the tone of the debate and it has good to feel that the minister is listening.”

Dame Fiona Reynolds, director general of the National Trust, told the meeting that she had been "horrified by the draft" because the document focused on promoting the economy over environmental concerns.

She added: "It’s good to hear Greg Clark's confirmation of the goal of balance and his warm words about genuine consultation. I now look forward to seeing amendments to the draft NPPF which deliver balance - this is what's now needed.”

What Ed Miliband Should Say At Labour Conference, But Won’t

It is now beyond question that Ed Miliband is moving his party to the left, or redefining the centre ground if you prefer, or drawing a line under the New Labour era. Or whatever.










The latest symbolic move has been to back Palestinian statehood in advance of a vote at the UN. This is a peculiar decision that makes no real sense before knowing what the Palestinians are putting on the table, except to send a strong message to the party faithful that Ed Miliband is shifting policy on the Middle East. This line on Israel/Palestine is one that Tony Blair and Gordon Brown would never have countenanced and that is the whole point.

Ed Miliband is determined to ditch the legacy of the Blair-Brown era (which is odd considering that he is its creature) and I can’t help thinking this is a terrible strategic error.

The opposition is hamstrung by the fact that it still hasn’t found the right language to take on the government. Miliband has squeezed himself into a tiny ideological sliver, where he can’t move any further to the left for fear of inviting ridicule, but can’t entirely embrace the achievements of the Blair-Brown years either.

In welfare to work, education and health, the Cameroons are engaged in implementing the Blairite reform agenda. The logic of Ed Miliband in the new post-New Labour era should make it possible to oppose this from the Left. But there are still too many Blairites around him to quite pull this off. With Liam Byrne in charge of the policy review it will be impossible to dump the New Labour policy agenda in its entirety.

Instead of trying to persuade people that Cameron is a Thatcherite in disguise, Labour should concentrate on questioning the Tories’ competence in government. Ed Miliband’s conference speech should recognise that all the most adventurous ideas of the new government are stolen from New Labour and give them a cautious welcome. He should then say that the job of opposition is to forensically examine the government’s record on delivery and stand back.

He won’t do this, of course, because to embrace the Blairite legacy would mean immediate death within the party.

Liberal Democrat Leaders Say Fair Taxation Is Key To Cutting Deficit

Danny Alexander outlines plans to kickstart economy by ensuring money hoarded by Labour is spent on infrastructure.












Liberal Democrats should fight the next election by aspiring to lift those earning less than £12,500 out of paying income tax, says Danny Alexander.

The Liberal Democrats should fight the next general election by aspiring to lift anyone earning less than £12,500 out of paying income tax, Danny Alexander said.

The chief secretary to the Treasury, a close ally of Nick Clegg, also set out the "next steps in our plan for growth", including a pot of £500m drawn from "unallocated funds" across Whitehall. Later, in an interview with the BBC's Andrew Neil, Alexander said these funds had been taken from savings found across government and did not amount to a stimulus.

Although this money comes from within the "spending plans", he said, the cash will now be disbursed with more urgency to kickstart infrastructure projects currently struggling for credit, with the hope of galvanising private spending.

It is the third indication from the Lib Dems in the past week that they intend to concentrate efforts on accelerating capital projects, which marks a subtle shift in emphasis towards greater public spending, without busting the headline deficit reduction plan.

Clegg made a speech on the subject last week, announcing that Alexander was now in charge of 40 projects across Whitehall, ensuring they are implemented rather than delayed.

They are pressing because they believe that if government funds already allocated can be spent rather than hoarded – which they believe was the case under the last Labour government – modest upfront sums "gear" up to become substantial amounts of fresh capital.

The business secretary, Vince Cable, also evoked the policies of Franklin D Roosevelt in the 1930s when he called for a "New Deal-style stimulus" for capital investment in an interview on Saturday with the Guardian. In his Q&A with Neil on Sunday evening at the party conference, Alexander refused to back Cable's language, but said he preferred to express it as the government "straining every sinew" to get the economy growing more.

As well as further schemes to drive capital investment, and the aspiration of the party going further in its bid to take the low paid out of tax, Alexander also set out measures to increase tax revenues.

He repeated a pledge made in last year's conference speech that there would be a clampdown on tax evasion, with 2,250 HMRC staff working on evasion and avoidance. He said the government was already raising £2bn in this way this year, which he pledged would rise to £7bn annually by the end of the parliament.

In one month's time, an "affluent team" will begin looking at the 350,000 wealthiest taxpayers who each earn more than £2.5m a year, in addition to the 5,000 who are already monitored: "These are the people who pay or should pay the 50p rate of tax," he said in his speech on the first morning of conference.

"My message to the small minority who don't pay what they owe is simple – I agree with the chancellor. We will find you and your money and you will pay your fair share," he said.

He was sanguine about the 50p rate of tax – which Tory colleagues expect will be dismantled if a review winding up in January shows it yields little revenue. Once Alexander had said he believed it was "cloud cuckoo land" the rate would be discarded despite Tory colleagues regarding him to agree he was not ideologically committed to it should it emerge to be unlucrative.

Tories say the debate behind the scenes is turning not on whether the 50p tax rate stays or goes but rather on what amount the replacement levy raises – the sum the previous Labour government intended it to raise when they introduced the tax; or the amount the 50p rate has actually brought in. The question then becomes what tax on the wealthy be brought in its stead.

Alexander said: "Fair taxation of the wealthiest is key to our deficit reduction plan. Of course, if a better way can be found to raise the money from this group, I will be willing to consider it."

Later in his interview with Neil, Alexander talked about ensuring the "tax burden" on the wealthy remained high.

Earlier in the day, Clegg also made it clear the party's negotiations on the 50p rate would not see them martial an ideological commitment to it, but rather they would accept its replacement by some other form of levy on the well-off.

He told the BBC's Andrew Marr programme: "It stays unless we can first make more progress on lowering the tax burden on people on low and middle incomes, and secondly making sure as the chancellor himself has said we can find other ways the wealthiest can pay their fair share."

In Birmingham, Alexander's speech was remarkable for placing an emphasis on how to push ahead with another aspect of the Lib Dem income tax policy, at the other end of the scale.

He told the conference hall: "In the next parliament, I want us to go further; our aspiration should be that someone working full time on the minimum wage should pay no income tax at all. An income tax threshold of £12,500 – think what that would do to work incentives, think what it would mean for basic fairness. Let's put that on the front page of our next manifesto."

The coalition agreement pledges that both parties in government will raise the income tax threshold to £10,000 by the end of the parliament and it is one of the policies the party is proudest of.

The policy has received support on the centre-right of the political spectrum with Tories sympathetic to its aims of cutting tax for the less well paid, but it has been criticised for being poorly targeted; in its original form this was a tax cut enjoyed by all, regardless of income.

The policy also has its Tory critics within the cabinet who fear a policy that removes people from paying tax would sever the relationship between government and the people.

Now the Lib Dems have committed themselves to raising the tax threshold still further, putting on the record an early indication of how they might seek to differentiate themselves from the Conservatives towards the end of the parliament.

Alexander's speech was occasionally heckled by one audience member with a shout of "rubbish" when Alexander criticised the Labour policies of Gordon Brown – a reminder that some delegates in the hall do not agree with the party leadership's decision to back plans to eliminate the structural deficit by the end of the parliament.

The coalition is currently trying hard to devise policies that will stimulate the British economy without busting either of the two targets they hope to hit at the end of the parliament – eliminating the structural deficit by 2014-2015 and bringing down the debt-to-GDP ratio.

While insistent they will not resile from the so-called "plan A" both on and off the record, the new imperative is to find ways of using existing capital spending commitment to encourage the private sector to part with their capital and increase the amount of capital in the economy.

On Friday, the business secretary Vince Cable, published a pamphlet for the CentreForum thinktank in which he suggested that alongside a new round of quantitative easing, he also believed new infrastructure projects were necessary including new roads built as toll roads.

This would have the advantage of encouraging the private sector to embark on a capital investment with a certain revenue stream not coming from the public purse.

Insisting his proposals amounted to a radical Keynesian package – using language and ideology not associated with the Conservative chancellor, George Osborne – Cable said that in the face of a stagnating economy ministers had to "pull all the levers available to government. We are not powerless."

Cable said: "It was four years after the Great Crash that Roosevelt came in and several years before they could do anything. Dams started being built 10 years after the Great Crash. What I have set out is a Keynesian approach to a demand crisis, but operating in a new world in which governments are highly constrained by these very febrile international financial markets. We constantly have to pay attention to them."

Now Alexander will disburse a "Growing Places fund", which he hopes enable the creation of local infrastructure across England.

"£500m to deliver key infrastructure and unlock development and create jobs. Providing a one-off upfront capital investment to kickstart developments that are stalled due to cash flow problems or lack of confidence.

"Putting local areas in the driving seat, enabling local government to invest in the key strategic infrastructure projects that they have identified as priorities and getting people into work."

Alexander said: "As Liberal Democrats, our judgments about what needs to be done should be driven by the liberal economy we want to build – sustainable, balanced, competitive, fair. To get there we must break down the vested interests – the enemies of growth that stand in the way of future prosperity."

"Too many businesses are being held back by congested roads, slow railways, inadequate broadband. Now more than ever, we need to get on with this work."

Hugh Grant: style watch

OK, so Italian politics has its problems, but at least they know how to dress. Hugh Grant, on the other hand, here lends weight to the old style adage that British men can't do casual.

When it comes to rocking a three-piece suit with a pocket square, the Savile Row gent still leads the world, but a certain type of British man still flounders as soon as let off the strictest dress code leash.

The trouble with this outfit is that the messages are mixed: was he trying to look smart but didn't have time to pull himself together and tuck his shirt in, or was he aiming for casual and put a suit jacket on as an afterthought? I suspect he was aiming for the kind of rakish dishevelment that Bill Nighy has made his own. But to pull that off takes effort.

Only the most perfectly fitted jacket looks good rumpled. Lucky for Hugh he's only addressing the Lib Dem conference. He'd never make it at London fashion week.

Liberal Democrats Vow To Fight Rightwing Policies Of 'Ruthless' Tories

Nick Clegg signals combative approach to coalition describing PM's party as political enemies who must be taken on.












Nick Clegg speaking at the Liberal Democrat party conference.

Nick Clegg's Liberal Democrats have vowed to face down "ruthless" and "extreme" forces in the Tory party to protect the British people from right-wing policies that would widen inequality and benefit the rich.

At a rally on Saturday night to open his party's annual conference in Birmingham, Clegg underlined the Lib Dems' newly combative approach to the coalition, describing David Cameron's party as "political enemies" who must be taken on when necessary in the national interest. After a traumatic year during which the Lib Dems' popularity has plummeted and their leader has been accused of abandoning his party's principles, Clegg struck a markedly more assertive note.

While trumpeting his party's successes so far in influencing health and tax policies, he said it was more prepared than ever to "fight tooth and nail" for what was right. "We are prepared to be awkward," he said. "We are not here to make things easy. We're here to put things right."

In an interview with the Observer, his deputy Simon Hughes goes further, telling the Conservatives they have no mandate to drive through a rightwing agenda. Hughes says the Tories have shown themselves to be "ruthless" operators in the first 16 months of the coalition over the referendum on electoral reform and boundary changes and says the resurgent right of the party is "extreme" on issues such as Europe and tax.

He says Tories must come to their senses and realise that they did not win the last election – and that they rely on the Lib Dems for power.

"Not only did they not win but they got a third of those who voted," he said. "The Tory party is not the dominant party in British politics that it used to be. It is absolutely not the dominant force in Scotland and Wales that it used to be. The Tory right have forgotten that."

In a rebuff to Conservative hardliners he adds: "There is absolutely no majority in parliament for your views. If there is a coalition government in the national interest then extreme remedies and answers are not appropriate."

The comments are bound to infuriate Cnservatives as the conference season opens. Many Tories are beginning to resent profoundly the way the Lib Dems are already watering down Tory changes on health and education and blocking Cameron from developing a more hardline approach on Europe.

Clegg and his ministers are now convinced they can claw back some of their pre-election popularity if they can demonstrate that they are reining in the Conservatives and stamping their own mark on government. Deep division between the coalition partners will surface in Birmingham over tax, welfare, health, pensions and last month's riots.

The party leadership will announce it will veto the abolition of the 50p tax rate for people earning over £150,000 – a key demand of the Tory right – unless and until other measures, such as a mansion tax, are imposed. It will also unveil plans to exempt the first £12,500 of earnings from tax, raising the target from its current level of £10,000.

Hughes says the party has to make the fight against wage inequality in the private sector a key theme. He said he is pushing hard for measures to limit the gap between the highest and lowest paid staff in the private sector. "The differentials are obscene and you really cannot just stand by," he said. "Liberal Democrats have to be clear. If Labour is really relaxed about the stinking rich, some of us are not relaxed about it."

Hughes also insisted that reform of party funding was essential to stop the Conservatives running ruthless campaigns – as they had against electoral reform. "The Tories can be nastier – with a result – if they are allowed to collect more and more money legitimately," he said.

On tax, he said the UK properties of wealthy non-domiciled individuals should be hit. "It would be entirely reasonable to say that if someone is not domiciled in this country but has six mansions they should be paying more into the system." Danny Alexander, the chief secretary to the Treasury, will announce the commitment of £600m to boost infrastructure projects and will attack bankers who fail to lend to businesses. "Our judgments about what needs to be done should be driven by the liberal economy we want to build," he will say.

On Saturday night, the Lib Dem equalities minister, Lynne Featherstone, dismissed suggestions that Cameron had been a major force behind the move to legalise gay marriage when she claimed ownership of the policy. "Conference, this is a Liberal Democrat policy," she said.

Clegg said his party had shown courage entering a coalition that was now shaping policy by "cutting taxes, not for the rich, but for millions of people on low and middle incomes". The Lib Dems could have "bottled" the chance to govern but instead "rose to the challenge", he said, "and we did it knowing it meant working with our political enemies and almost certain short-term unpopularity".

The party leadership was celebrating the failure of former health spokesman Evan Harris to force a vote on the NHS. The Lib Dems believe they are making more progress to dilute the reforms behind the scenes.

When Dave Was Tapped Up By The KGB

Here's one for Robert Harris's next plotline: David Cameron has claimed that the KGB sought to sign him up as a double agent.


















Double agent: David Cameron (with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev).

Regaling students at Moscow State University this morning, the Prime Minister recalled his first visit to Russia as a student on his gap year between school and university in 1985.

'I took the Trans-Siberian Railway from Nakhodka to Moscow and went on to the Black Sea coast,' he said.

'There two Russians - speaking perfect English - turned up on a beach mostly used by foreigners.

'They took me out to lunch and dinner and asked me about life in England and what I thought about politics.

'When I got back I told my tutor at university and he asked me whether it was an interview.

'If it was, it seems I didn’t get the job.'

Quite how the KGB gags, if that's what they were, will go down with Mr Cameron's already prickly hosts remains to be seen.

Over breakfast (served with large quantities of alcohol, perhaps explaining Russian male life expectancy of 59), the PM and his policy advisers discussed how to approach the first visit by a British leader to Russia for six years.

The Prime Minister will not have been pleased by the headline on page one of this morning's Moscow Times: 'Kremlin Sees No "Reset" in UK Visit'.
The message from Sergei Prikhodko, Russian president Dmitry Medvedev's chief foreign policy adviser, could not have been clearer.



















Now and then: The Prime Minister on his visit to Moscow, left, and in an undated photograph, right, as he may have looked in 1985.

'No-one is expecting any breakthroughs, and in fact they are not needed,' he declares. 'Why fight? It is not necessary for us to have a "reset" with Britain. We will continue to work the way that we have been working in the past.'

Which, if he means what he says, means not terribly well, if at all. Officials admit Britain has had no formal contact at all with Russian strongman Vladimir Putin since 2007, when he made a cursory phone call to Downing Street to mark Gordon Brown's arrival as Prime Minister.

Mr Cameron acknowledges he is walking a tightrope on the visit, which, in what is becoming a trademark for his foreign visits, comes with a planeload of business leaders anxious to sign contracts in tow.

The PM does intend to make at least a passing public reference to the murder of Alexander Litvinenko in London - the only hostile nuclear incident ever to take place on British soil - which plunged Anglo-Russian relations to their lowest point since the end of the Cold War.












Poisoned: Alexander Litvinenko died in 2006, but Russia has steadfastly refused to extradite the prime suspect in the case, Andrei Lugovoy.

Russian dissident Litvinenko was poisoned with radioactive polonium-210 in London five years ago in what is alleged to have been a state-sponsored assassination.

But demands to extradite Andrei Lugovoy, the former KGB officer who is the chief suspect in the murder, will fall on deaf ears. Lugovoy, now a member of Russia's parliament, also had a message for Mr Cameron this morning.

'It's impossible to say who left the polonium,' he boasted from the comfort of a fishing trip in the Kamchatka peninsula in Russia's Far East.

But Mr Lugovoy does have a theory, which he is anxious to share. Litvinenko, he suggests, was involved in the trade of polonium and was killed not by the Russian secret service... but by MI6.

Back to Robert Harris!

UKIP Appeal To Tory Supporters, While Greens Target Lib Dems

You can tell it's autumn not just by the change in weather and threat of storms... but because the party conference season is under way.











Party conferences are under way with UKIP meeting in Eastbourne and the Green Party in Sheffield.

The first two have already started with the UK Independence Party (UKIP) meeting in Eastbourne and the Green Party, led by the Brighton Pavilion MP Caroline Lucas, in Sheffield.

UKIP leader Nigel Farage is using the conference to appeal to disaffected Tories.











Nigel Farage is appealing to people unhappy with Conservative policies.

He describes his party as having an "open door" and believes the bulk of new support for his party will come from those unhappy with Conservative policies.

'Mass deception'

Never one to shy away from controversy, he's used strong language to describe the three main parties at Westminster as "a group of college kids".

But his main target has been the Conservatives who he said were engaged in a "mass deception", claiming they promised one thing about Europe yet delivered another.

Elsewhere, despite the fact the Green's only MP represents Brighton Pavilion and the Brighton Council is the only Green-run administration in the country, the party is meeting in Sheffield.

Given the party's achievement at the local elections in May, this year's conference is particularly significant for its leader Caroline Lucas.

On national issues she's blamed "unrestrained capitalism" for the riots last month.

She told her party conference that underlying issues, such as lack of jobs and wage inequalities, must be tackled.

And she criticised David Cameron's "repressive crackdown" on those responsible for the disorder.

Just as UKIP want to appeal to disaffected Tories, Caroline Lucas hopes to appeal to disgruntled Liberal Democrats.














Caroline Lucas became Green MP for Brighton Pavilion in 2010.

In her speech she mocked the Lib Dem leader and Sheffield MP, Nick Clegg, as "the minister for meeting angry people and being shouted at".

The party recently celebrated its first 100 days in power at Brighton & Hove City Council.

However, not all its pledges have been a resounding success - the idea for a "meat-free Monday" had to be dropped after a council official proposed piloting it with bin men.

But some of the pledges the party has introduced have fared rather better.

They've introduced an extra 60p on the minimum wage for 340 council workers to meet their living wage pledge.

They've also attempted to tackle the council's pay gap, with chief executive John Barradell taking a 5% pay cut.

They may have only been in power in Brighton for a few months but there is clearly still a lot of work to do - such as tackling Brighton's housing shortages and the lack of school places.

"National support for the Green Party in opinion polls has not increased significantly"
Louise Stewart

Despite Caroline Lucas' high profile as party leader and the election breakthroughs in Brighton, national support for the party in opinion polls has not increased significantly and remains in single digits.

So while the conference is a good time to take stock of the party's achievements, it's often a time when delegates - and the public - start looking at whether their leader is really delivering.

Over the next few weeks we'll see how Nick Clegg, Ed Miliband and David Cameron all fare.

With the Liberal Democrats conference next, in Liverpool, Nick Clegg will be hoping he does not, in Caroline Lucas' words, end up "meeting angry people and being shouted at".

The Liberal Democrats Aren’t Especially Liberal – Or Even Democratic

The junior Coalition partner’s policies have made a mockery of its historic name.












What is Sarah Teather's party actually delivering for Britain?

If the Liberal Democrats didn’t exist, under what circumstances would you choose to create them? I’ll assume that it’s the “Liberal” bit of their historical accident of a name that matters (not many anti-democrats run for election these days). If we did feel the need for a Liberal Party, I guess it would be because neither the Labour nor Tory organisations were being sufficiently, well, liberal in their policy-making.

Ten years of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown making illegal anything that moved, while repeatedly trying to give the state the power to lock us up without charge for longer and longer periods? Yes, I can see a need for some more liberalism; that there could be a useful role for a party to react viscerally against Labour’s criminalising tendencies. Ten years of Margaret Thatcher? I’m hardly one to criticise my political hero, but I can’t deny that prolonged exposure to her governing style might make a voter yearn for something a little less prescriptive; a little more laissez-faire in matters social. Regardless of your own political disposition, then, I don’t think it’s hard to make the case that political space could exist for a party which prioritised the autonomy of the individual over either stateist or corporatist collectivism.

Now imagine that you are a Liberal Democrat. Your organisation has been in the wilderness for 80 years, since the time of Lloyd George. The general election of 2010 gives you the chance to share government with the Conservatives; this is the first time in recent history that an administration will have a serious Liberal presence. How would you behave? Me, I would be bending over backwards to demonstrate that not only is a liberal instinct a useful one to bring to the art of government, but that it also makes sense to have that instinct embodied by my organisation. Anyone anyone can call themselves a “liberal”. The trick is to convince voters that such an instinct requires a party to carry it.

Instead, what has happened? Andrew Lansley’s Health Bill, which made a tentative step towards liberalisation of health provision in the UK, is first of all postponed, and then watered down, largely at the behest of the Lib Dems. Even after the Bill passed the Commons this week, Baroness (Shirley) Williams and the dis-elected ex-MP Evan Harris continued to mutter darkly and publicly about their inability to support it. Lib Dems ensured that the planned GP consortia – supposed to act for us, the patients – will include hospital doctors and nurses; a prioritisation of the producer over the patient. Unelected peer and dis-elected ex‑MP – I withdraw my opening remarks about the party’s name: they’re not even democratic, let alone liberal.

Also this week, Nick Clegg gave a speech about the Coalition’s flagship free schools. These schools are the last, best hope of those children failed by local education authorities. Academic excellence through freedom of choice: what could be more liberal than that? Instead, Mr Clegg chose to focus on the importance of preventing anyone running such a school from making a profit – profit is bad, apparently, because successful schools might use the money to expand – and went out of his way to support an even greater role for councils – the LEAs – in controlling access. In a straight choice, the Lib Dem leader prioritises the producer interest.

I could go on. Lib Dems also want to delay the election of local police commissioners. Anti-democratic again; and when was denying a voice to the people a “liberal” characteristic? And I’ve not mentioned the party’s support for the Human Rights Act, largely because it defies parody, let alone analysis. “Votes for prisoners”, say Lib Dems. It’s not quite the heady fight of the People’s Budget of 1909, is it?

Ah yes, say Lib Dem activists, but think of all the good we bring to the Coalition. When pressed, they trumpet the lack of recognition of marriage in the tax system. I’m not clear why it’s liberal to penalise the natural pair-bonding affinity of human mammals, but there you are. They also claim to have secured the increase in the personal allowance for the poorest taxpayers, as well as the retention – thus far – of the 50p top rate.

The 50p top rate is economically illiterate, and needn’t detain us. Symbolism does matter, though, and if keeping it there for a few months longer means that those such as Simon Hughes (“Champion of University Access”, no less) continue to vote with the Government, so be it. But did we need the Lib Dems to make the case for the increase in personal allowances? Tories have campaigned against the complex and inefficient recycling of income from the poor, to the government, and then back to the poor, for years. More importantly, the Right-wing view of tax (to reduce it wherever possible) is truly liberal, because it seeks to free people from state dependency. Lib Dems view tax as an instrument of social engineering; hence the posturing over 50p.

Eighty years in the wilderness, 80 years protecting the flame, and they can’t even mount a coherent case for electoral reform (“AV is a miserable little compromise” – Nick Clegg. But then: “Vote for AV” – Nick Clegg). Measured as the opportunity to show that British liberalism deserves the vehicle of its own party, coalition has been a disaster for the Lib Dems.

We have to face up to this political category error. Just because we can all agree that there’s a need for some liberalism in our politics, just because some unpopular politicians have given themselves that name, we’ve taken the Liberal Democrats at their own valuation. But Shirley Williams and Evan Harris are not liberals, and nor are the other former leaders and big Lib Dem beasts who haunt the media airwaves with a greater prominence than the paucity of their electoral support could ever justify.

Not that a political position has to be popular in order to be worth holding; and if a party wants to act as a pressure group for the producer interest in health and education, or as a supporter of judicial activism on Human Rights, or to call for ever-greater European integration (as Danny Alexander did this week), then good luck to it. But it shouldn’t mis-name itself.

Where the Lib Dems have been politically effective in the Coalition, they have been anything but liberal. And when they claim to be liberal, they are merely copying policy which the larger party would implement anyway. Neither tactic makes them a worthwhile coalition partner for a Conservative; worse, from the Lib Dem point of view, neither tactic has demonstrated that the 80 years without them were a political loss for Britain. If the Liberal Democrats didn’t already exist, to answer my opening question, I suspect that few would contemplate breathing life into the politically unattractive, social democratic clay from which they are fashioned. We already have a party to represent the sectional producer interest. It’s called “Labour”.

David Cameron: Eton College Should Run A State School

David Cameron wants his old school – Eton College – to set up and run an academy funded by the taxpayer.












The Prime Minister confirmed that he met representatives from the £31,000-a-year boarding school this week to discuss taking over a state secondary.

Eton joined several other leading private schools at a Downing Street reception on Thursday staged to drive forward the Coalition’s flagship education reforms.

It is the latest in a series of attempts being made by the Government to court the independent sector as part of an expansion of the academies programme.

Earlier this summer, Nick Gibb, the Schools Minister, also addressed a meeting of the Headmasters’ and Headmistresses’ Conference, which represents 250 leading fee-paying schools, over the issue.

The move is likely to infuriate teaching unions who are already opposed to academies which they see as the effective “privatisation” of state education.

But talking to the BBC, Mr Cameron insisted that the sponsorship of academies represented a “great way” for independent schools to fulfil their “charitable purpose”.

Asked if he wanted his former school to formally join the programme, he said: “Yes, I would like all private schools to engage in this agenda and if you look at most private schools many of them already run bursaries for children from less well - off backgrounds and partnering state schools.

“To me all private schools have always had a charitable foundation, a charitable purpose, and that's a great way to deliver that.”

He added: "The truth is the problem has been not enough good school places in our country...so anyone who can play a role in that - private schools included - is welcome through my door to talk about how we drive up standards."

Tony Little, the Eton headmaster, said that the Eton had close relations with local state schools and was examining "several possible routes" for greater involvement and "ruled nothing out".

An expansion of academies is being seen as central to the Government’s attempts to drive up standards of state education.

Under reforms, schools are given almost complete freedom to run their own policies on admissions, the curriculum, teachers’ pay and the shape of the academic year.

Top state schools are automatically given the right to apply for academy status.

Ministers also want the worst schools to make the switch under the leadership of a third party sponsor – usually outstanding state schools, charities, education companies and entrepreneurs.

Some 28 independent schools are also helping to run academies, including Sevenoaks, Dulwich, Wellington, Marlborough, Malvern, Winchester, Uppingham and Oundle.

But ministers are keen to get more independent schools involved.

Mr Cameron joined Eton at 13 and left in 1984. Lord Waldegrave, the former Conservative Cabinet Minister is currently the provost of Eton and attended Thursday’s meeting.

Interest In Apprenticeships Soars As Universities Say Fees Will Put Too Many Students Off

Universities joined the growing consensus against the rise in tuition fees today as figures revealed thousands are seeking alternative routes through apprenticeships.


















Falling fees: Students at some universities could see their tuition fee drop as part of a government incentive to lower the cost.

Higher education establishments across the country are vowing to drop their fees to below £7,500 after the Government announced incentives for those that charge lower amounts.

The move comes after ministers announced that English institutions who charged £7,500 or lower would be able to bid for a share in 20,000 funded places.

The decision has seen 12 universities, all of whom were planning to charge up to £9,000, express an interest in lowering their fees.

The majority considering the move are believed to be former polytechnics, including the University of Derby and University of Hertfordshire.

Despite the move, figures released yesterday suggested that the rise in fees will result in a drop of 7.5 per cent in the university enrollment rate for males and nearly 5 per cent for female students.

Ministers, who had expected just a handful of elite institutions to charge £9,000, are desperate to drive fees down to reduce the burden of the student loan on the public purse.

The move will also help reduce the mountain of crippling debt for some graduates.

However, it drew widespread criticism yesterday and accusations that the Coalition’s policy is in complete disarray.


















Attack: Liam Burns, president of the National Union of Students, said the revelation is yet another example of the Coalition's shambolic policies.

It comes just one week before the admissions process for autumn 2012 is due to start. This means thousands will be expected to choose universities without knowing the cost.

Liam Burns, president of the National Union of Students, said the revelation is yet another example of the Coalition’s shambolic policies.

‘With students preparing to submit university applications in just a matter of weeks, the shambles of the Government’s fees arrangements has left places being auctioned off to the lowest bidder and universities looking to cut corners,’ he said.

‘As a direct result of ministers’ bungled funding policies, prospective students have been left in the dark as to what universities will charge and now face an agonising wait for clarity over their future options.

‘We need urgent action from ministers to put right shambolic policies that risk doing permanent damage to students’ prospects.’

The disarray among the university fees comes as figures revealed that interest in apprenticeship vacancies has soared rapidly since the turn of the year.















On the up: Searches for 'apprentice vacancies' are up by 400%, while the term 'apprenticeship' has seen an increase of 625.















Rises: The National Apprenticeship Service website (blue) has seen a 50 per cent rise in visits year on year, while notgoingtouni.co.uk, has seen hits soar by 150 per cent.

Statistics released by internet analysts Hitwise showed that since January 2011, searches for 'apprenticeship vacancies' have soared by 425 per cent, while the term 'apprenticeship' is up 62 per cent.

And the National Apprenticeship Service website has seen a 50 per cent rise in visits year on year.

Another website, notgoingtouni.co.uk, has seen hits soar by 150 per cent since this time last year.

The figures also revealed that the most popular type of apprenticeships searched for were that of plumber, engineer or electrician.

And the most popular companies searched for included British Gas, NHS and British Telecom.

Immigration Amnesty: David Cameron's Government Has Failed To Do Its Duty

Looking at the UK Border Agency, it found it to still be, in John Reid’s famous words, “unfit for purpose”. The Agency has been engaged in an attempt to clear a backlog of some 450,000 cases involving would-be asylum cases, some dating back to the 1990s and “lost” or hidden until they were discovered in 2006.













Over 400,000 cases have now been closed. But fewer than 40,000 people have been deported compared to more than 160,000 who have simply been told they can stay, regardless of the merits of their cases. 75,000 cases have been put back on the shelves because those people have simply disappeared.

One has to have some sympathy for the Agency and the Home Office. A combination of the poisonous inheritance of the Human Rights Act and the Equality Act, and the judicial imperialist judges of Strasbourg have rendered it all but impossible for the Agency to do its job, quite apart from its own shortcomings. The Lib-Dem/Con Coalition has failed to honour the Prime Minister’s election pledge to replace the Human Rights Act and has no intention of contracting out of the European Convention on Human Rights, either formally, or in the French style of ignoring it.

The Committee concluded that “in practice an amnesty has taken place, at a considerable cost to the taxpayer”. But in an immense act of self-deception (for it will deceive no one else) the Immigration Minister, Damian Green, said: “There is absolutely no amnesty.”

It is time the Government remembered that if it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck and walks like a duck, it probably is a duck.

Contrary to what was promised before the election there has been an amnesty. The Prime Minister should remember too that the first duty above all others of Government is to secure the nation’s borders against unwelcome intruders, whether they come under arms, under lorries or under the protection of foreign jurisdictions. A government which cannot do that is not a sovereign government at all.


There was plenty of variety in your comments this week, but it was some comfort to me that those who had most connections with the Middle East, or connections with particular countries there, confirmed my view that it was a more peaceable and a safer place for British people fifty years ago than it is now. That was also the view of wild_rover 2011 and crown armourer. Several of you, including flatulent_emmissions and mockpudding agreed that what follows Gaddafii and Mubaruk will be no improvement, whilst auntycensorship saw Libya as a humanitarian disaster and oggy rightly questioned whether bombing people into democracy is a good idea, and vingoe feared that our intervention in Egypt might open the way for the Moslem Brotherhood to take power.

Igonikon Jacl posted a very good piece on the consequences of our (Christian) Reformation and those of a lack of a Muslim one. That chimed with my view and that of mpjones that not every country regardless of its state of cultural and political development is best off with democracy, and pragmatist pointed to the experience of China. Then jeongu observed that Western democracy is different to the Muslim variety and marcusleeds suggested that there cannot be democracy where Islam allows no separation of mosque and state.

All in all, we seem to be mostly pessimistic about whether the Arab Spring will be good for the Middle East, or for us. Nor was there much optimism about immigration, but as my blog post today returned to that subject I will confine myself to saying that although Johny Rottenborough said that both NuLab and my Party “had betrayed us”, I would add that my Party did not do so whilst I had influence in it. It would pay him, and others, to read Migration Watch and remember who flung open the gates, when and why.

The subject of immigration (and indeed of Europe) spilled over into a discussion of democracy here. There were plenty of posts like those from kingarthur 93, alhamilton, unrepresented and others, not to mention jebberisback who led the intellectual Left wing by regretting that the IRA had not murdered me as well as so many of my friends, claimed that there was nothing that they could do to make the democratic system work. Obviously some of you were stung by my questio0: “Where were you when it was all going wrong?”, pleading that it is impossible to change parties, or to win through from a weak position. So what about Alex Salmond? He has changed things. Or what about the Blairite modernisers? Come to that how did the Liberals come from where they were not long ago to being in Government? Or, if you prefer how did the Thatcherites bust the postwar consensus and then fall prey to the neo-Blairite modernisers.

The Tories’ Facile Metaphors Mask A Frightening Lack Of Insight

Osborne and Cameron have no way to express the global challenges they face without sounding as if they are making excuses for their failed policies.














Pity George Osborne at the helm of the British economy, adrift in a sea of foreign economic troubles. To the east, the leaders of eurozone countries fight for the survival of their flagship project. It took a last-minute bailout of Greece on 21 July to assuage fears that the country's
insolvency would spread to other heavily indebted nations and sink the single currency. To the west, Barack Obama is locked in hand-to-hand combat with Republicans over the terms on which Congress might grant the government permission to borrow more money. Failure to reach an agreement risks a US debt default and panic in the markets.

Ministers are fond of maritime metaphors about the economy. The Justice Secretary, Kenneth Clarke, recently described the European and US crises as a pair of icebergs, between which the UK economy must sail. For months, Osborne has been warning that our recovery will be "choppy". When, on 26 July, the Office for National Statistics announced that gross domestic product grew by just 0.2 per cent in the second quarter of 2011, the Chancellor defended his strategy by insisting that austerity had made the UK "a safe harbour in a storm". The implication is that bond traders, reassured by the government's unbending discipline, will not question Britain's creditworthiness.

Made in Britain

You don't have to travel far from Osborne's office to find sceptical responses to the Chancellor's view. You don't even have to leave the Treasury. "That's a pretty lame argument," was the verdict of one senior mandarin. Without growth, the government risks falling short of its revenue and deficit-reduction targets. Markets would then be unforgiving. Austerity was supposed to be the means to an end - restoring confidence as a spur to growth. It isn't working. There isn't much point in securing a harbour without any ships in it.

The Chancellor's misguided metaphor signals a deeper failure of imagination, dating back to the onset of the financial crisis. Now that he is responsible for the economy, Osborne is keen to place Britain's predicament in the wider context of global financial instability. This perspective is newly acquired.

The global economic storm has been raging for nearly four years. For the first two of them, Osborne, as shadow chancellor, played down the international scale of the crisis. Tory election prospects depended on heaping as much blame as possible on Gordon Brown. Yes, there was an international crisis, Osborne conceded, but Labour's reckless spending had left the UK defenceless. The worst of the recession, he claimed, was "made in Britain". Labour deserved some of that scorn but not all. Brown's reputation for sound judgement expired with the hubristic claim to have abolished boom and bust. Yet the relentless focus on domestic politics stopped the Tories from developing a coherent account of what lay behind the financial meltdown. It is an omission that is making the Chancellor's job much harder today.

The credit crunch was, above all, a crisis in globalisation - the deep economic integration of market economies that accelerated exponentially after the end of the cold war. A defining feature of that process was the erosion of borders to facilitate the swift movement of goods, money and people. Power drained away from national governments, with their jurisdictions quaintly demarcated on old-fangled maps, towards global capital markets and multinational corporations.

The City of London was the hub of this globalised world order and host to some of its most reckless financial institutions. Britain became, in the words of the Business Secretary, Vince Cable, "a large offshore banking centre with a medium-sized country attached to it". That made the UK particularly vulnerable .

It is not, therefore, surprising that we experienced a particularly deep recession, followed by a feeble recovery. It is true, as the Conservatives claim, that more fiscal discipline during the boom might have cushioned the blow.

A Budget surplus would have been nice but it would not have changed the underlying reality that Britain was the most diligent disciple of an economic doctrine - ultra-liberal, free-market capitalism - that failed. Osborne and the Prime Minister, David Cameron, seem never fully to have grasped the implications of that failure. Instead, they constructed a morality tale about Labour profligacy causing both the deficit and the national debt. The two items are routinely and duplicitously conflated in the much-abused homily of the maxed-out national credit card. As a parable of domestic economics, it is neat. As an intellectual response to a global crisis, it is dangerously facile.

Fiscal masochism

Manifestly, Osborne's strategy is not going according to plan. Yet to admit even the possibility of an alternative would be to concede that his particular brand of fiscal masochism was a political choice all along and not, as advertised, a diktat from the bond market.

To avoid any discussion of a plan B, ministers privately talk up the flexibility of plan A. The headline ambition is to eliminate the structural deficit within four years but the Budget leaves room for manoeuvre. "If you read the small print," says one member of the cabinet, "it is really five years."

In political terms, the distinction is hardly relevant. The public has accepted austerity and, as the Tories never tire of pointing out, Labour fought the election offering cuts, too. Besides, the government's promotion of Osborne's deficit-reduction timetable as the only legitimate benchmark of credibility has become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Financial markets might have accepted a more flexible approach last May. Now, they are more likely to punish a fiscal wiggle as a failure of nerve.

Osborne and Cameron vigorously pushed a narrow domestic view of Britain's economic problems to serve the demands of last year's election campaign. Now, they are trapped in that parochial story. They have no way to express the global challenges they face without sounding as if they are making excuses for their failed policies - much as they accused Brown of doing. Without an adequate intellectual response to the underlying causes of the crisis, Britain's government floats rudderless through the storm.

Rafael Behr is chief political commentator of the New Statesman.