Mammoth swing from Labour gives Lib Dem by-election gain ahead of Brighton conference

Why the social security policy paper should be rejected

On Monday at Liberal Democrat conference, party members will have the chance to debate policy motion F31 which endorses a new Liberal Democrat welfare policy paper, Mending the safety net. However, as one of the members of the working group which wrote the paper, I strongly urge all members at conference to vote against the motion.

William Wallace writes…Taking on the anti-tax movement

If you read any other paper than the Guardian, you will have noted some days ago a generously-covered story about the enormous 'lifetime tax bill' faced by British families. The 'average UK household' in 2014-15 was estimated to pay £826,000 in direct and indirect taxes over their working life, while the top 20% 'will pay £1,686,970' - a curiously exact figure for an estimate, and a claimed rise of 4.3% over the previous year. The story had no reference to any benefits that flowed back to taxpayers in return for this drain on their income: education for children (£180,000 per child or more in the private sector between 3 and 18), health care (say £100,000 per person, incurred most heavily in the last two years of life), and post-retirement benefits (state pensions of £6-9000 a year over 10-20 years, bus passes, etc.), not to mention contributions to all the public goods that make civilised living comfortable: policing, roads and railways, external security, welfare, market support and regulation. The reader i

Federal Conference - Agenda 2020: The final stage

Normal 0 false false false EN-GB X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 Sunday morning at Brighton will see one of the most important debates at conference. It probably won't be terribly controversial (though one never knows …), but it is party members' chance to say what they think - not about specific policies the party should adopt, but about what the party stands for: its basic philosophy. This is the final stage in the Federal Policy Committee's 'Agenda 2020' process, which has featured many times before in the pages of Lib Dem Voice. Over the past year we have published two consultation papers, organised two consultative sessions at federal conferences, commissioned a set of essays and organised an essay competition within the party (all available here at http://www.libdems.org.uk/agenda2020).