Exclusive: Was this the Con-Lib agreement?

by Sunny Hundal
1:34 pm - May 12th 2010

I’ve been sent this document from a source who wishes to remain anonymous.

They say this document forms the basis of the agreement between the Libdems and Conservatives. I’m not going to publish the Word document, but here it is in HTML format.

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Conservative Liberal Democrat coalition negotiations

Agreements reached

11 May 2010

This document sets out agreements reached between the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats on a range of issues. These are the issues that needed to be resolved between us in order for us to work together as a strong and stable government. It will be followed in due course by a final Coalition Agreement, covering
the full range of policy and including foreign, defence and domestic policy issues not covered in this document.

1. Deficit Reduction

The parties agree that deficit reduction and continuing to ensure economic recovery is the most urgent issue facing Britain. We have therefore agreed that there will need to be:

a significantly accelerated reduction in the structural deficit over the course of a Parliament, with the main burden of deficit reduction borne by reduced spending rather than increased taxes;
arrangements that will protect those on low incomes from the effect of public sector pay constraint and other spending constraints; and
protection of jobs by stopping Labour’s proposed jobs tax.

The parties agree that a plan for deficit reduction should be set out in an emergency budget within 50 days of the signing of any agreement; the parties note that the credibility of a plan on deficit reduction depends on its long-term deliverability, not just the depth of immediate cuts. New forecasts of growth and borrowing should be made by an independent Office for Budget Responsibility for this emergency budget.

The parties agree that modest cuts of £6 billion to non-front line services can be made within the financial year 2010-11, subject to advice from the Treasury and the
Bank of England on their feasibility and advisability. Some proportion of these savings can be used to support jobs, for example through the cancelling of some backdated demands for business rates. Other policies upon which we are agreed will further support job creation and green investment, such as work programmes for the unemployed and a green deal for energy efficiency investment.

The parties agree that reductions can be made to the Child Trust Fund and tax credits for higher earners.

2. Spending Review

– NHS, Schools and a Fairer Society

The parties agree that a full Spending Review should be held, reporting this Autumn, following a fully consultative process involving all tiers of government and the private sector.

The parties agree that funding for the NHS should increase in real terms in each year of the Parliament, while recognising the impact this decision would have on other departments.
The target of spending 0.7% of GNI on overseas aid will also remain in place.

We will fund a significant premium for disadvantaged pupils from outside the schools budget by reductions in spending elsewhere.

The parties commit to holding a full Strategic Security and Defence Review alongside the Spending Review with strong involvement of the Treasury.

The Government will be committed to the maintenance of Britain’s nuclear deterrent, and have agreed that the renewal of Trident should be scrutinised to ensure value for money. Liberal Democrats will continue to make the case for alternatives.

We will immediately play a strong role in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference, and press for continued progress on multilateral disarmament.

The parties commit to establishing an independent commission to review the long term affordability of public sector pensions, while protecting accrued rights.

We will restore the earnings link for the basic state pension from April 2011 with a “triple guarantee” that pensions are raised by the higher of earnings, prices or 2.5%, as proposed by the Liberal Democrats.

3. Tax Measures

The parties agree that the personal allowance for income tax should be increased in order to help lower and middle income earners. We agree to announce in the first Budget a substantial increase in the personal allowance from April 2011, with the benefits focused on those with lower and middle incomes. This will be funded with the money that would have been used to pay for the increase in Employee National Insurance thresholds proposed by the Conservatives, as well as revenues from increases in Capital Gains Tax rates for non-business assets as described below. The increase in Employer National Insurance thresholds proposed by the Conservatives will go ahead in order to stop Labour’s jobs tax. We also agree to a longer term policy objective of further increasing the personal allowance to £10,000, making further real terms steps each year towards this objective.

We agree that this should take priority over other tax cuts, including cuts to Inheritance Tax. We also agree that provision will be made for Liberal Democrat MPs to abstain on budget resolutions to introduce transferable tax allowances for married couples without prejudice to this coalition agreement.

The parties agree that a switch should be made to a per-plane, rather than per-passenger duty; a proportion of any increased revenues over time will be used to help fund increases in the personal allowance.

We further agree to seek a detailed agreement on taxing non-business capital gains at rates similar or close to those applied to income, with generous exemptions for entrepreneurial business activities.

The parties agree that tackling tax avoidance is essential for the new government, and that all efforts will be made to do so, including detailed development of Liberal Democrat proposals.

4. Banking Reform

The parties agree that reform to the banking system is essential to avoid a repeat of Labour’s financial crisis, to promote a competitive economy, to sustain the recovery and to protect and sustain jobs.

We agree that a banking levy will be introduced. We will seek a detailed agreement on implementation.

We agree to bring forward detailed proposals for robust action to tackle unacceptable bonuses in the financial services sector; in developing these proposals, we will ensure they are effective in reducing risk.

We agree to bring forward detailed proposals to foster diversity, promote mutuals and create a more competitive banking industry.

We agree that ensuring the flow of credit to viable SMEs is essential for supporting growth and should be a core priority for a new government, and we will work together to develop effective proposals to do so. This will include consideration of both a major loan guarantee scheme and the use of net lending targets for the nationalised banks.

The parties wish to reduce systemic risk in the banking system and will establish an independent commission to investigate the complex issue of separating retail and
investment banking in a sustainable way; while recognising that this would take time to get right, the commission will be given an initial time frame of one year to report.

The parties agree that the regulatory system needs reform to avoid a repeat of Labour’s financial crisis. We agree to bring forward proposals to give the Bank of England control of macro-prudential regulation and oversight of micro-prudential regulation.

The parties also agree to rule out joining the European Single Currency during the duration of this agreement.

5. Immigration

We have agreed that there should be an annual limit on the number of non-EU economic migrants admitted into the UK to live and work. We will consider jointly the mechanism for implementing the limit. We will end the detention of children for immigration purposes.

6. Political Reform

The parties agree to the establishment of five year fixed-term parliaments. A Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government will put a binding motion before the House of Commons in the first days following this agreement stating that the next general election will be held on the first Thursday of May 2015. Following this motion, legislation will be brought forward to make provision for fixed term parliaments of five years. This legislation will also provide for dissolution if 55% or more of the House votes in favour.

The parties will bring forward a Referendum Bill on electoral reform, which includes provision for the introduction of the Alternative Vote in the event of a positive
result in the referendum, as well as for the creation of fewer and more equal sized constituencies. Both parties will whip their Parliamentary Parties in both Houses to support a simple majority referendum on the Alternative Vote, without prejudice to the positions parties will take during such a referendum.

The parties will bring forward early legislation to introduce a power of recall, allowing voters to force a by-election where an MP was found to have engaged in serious wrongdoing and having had a petition calling for a by-election signed by 10% of his or her constituents.

We agree to establish a committee to bring forward proposals for a wholly or mainly elected upper chamber on the basis of proportional representation. The committee will come forward with a draft motions by December 2010. It is likely that this bill will advocate single long terms of office. It is also likely there will be a grandfathering system for current Peers. In the interim, Lords appointments will be made with the objective of creating a second chamber reflective of the share of the vote secured by the political parties in the last general election.

The parties will bring forward the proposals of the Wright Committee for reform to the House of Commons in full – starting with the proposed committee for management of programmed business and including government business within its scope by the third year of the Parliament.

The parties agree to reduce electoral fraud by speeding up the implementation of individual voter registration.

We have agreed to establish a commission to consider the ‘West Lothian question’.

The parties agree to the implementation of the Calman Commission proposals and the offer of a referendum on further Welsh devolution.

The parties will tackle lobbying through introducing a statutory register of lobbyists. We also agree to pursue a detailed agreement on limiting donations and reforming party funding in order to remove big money from politics.

The parties will promote the radical devolution of power and greater financial autonomy to local government and community groups. This will include a full review of local government finance.

7.
Pensions and Welfare

The parties agree to phase out the default retirement age and hold a review to set the date at which the state pension age starts to rise to 66, although it will not
be sooner than 2016 for men and 2020 for women. We agree to end the rules requiring compulsory annuitisation at 75.

We agree to implement the Parliamentary and Health Ombudsman’s recommendation to make fair and transparent payments to Equitable Life policy holders, through an independent payment scheme, for their relative loss as a consequence of regulatory failure.

The parties agree to end all existing welfare to work programmes and to create a single welfare to work programme to help all unemployed people get back into work.

We agree that Jobseeker’s Allowance claimants facing the most significant barriers to work should be referred to the aforementioned newly created welfare to work programme immediately, not after 12 months as is currently the case. We agree that Jobseeker’s Allowance claimants aged under 25 should be referred to the programme after a maximum of six months.

The parties agree to realign contracts with welfare to work service providers to reflect more closely the results they achieve in getting people back into work.

We agree that the funding mechanism used by government to finance welfare to work programmes should be reformed to reflect the fact that initial investment delivers later savings in lower benefit expenditure.

We agree that receipt of benefits for those able to work should be conditional on the willingness to work.

8. Education

Schools

We agree to promote the reform of schools in order to ensure:

that new providers can enter the state school system in response to parental demand;
that all schools have greater freedom over curriculum; and,
that all schools are held properly accountable.

Higher education

We await Lord Browne’s final report into higher education funding, and will judge its proposals against the need to:

increase social mobility;
take into account the impact on student debt;
ensure a properly funded university sector;
improve the quality of teaching;
advance scholarship;
and,
attract a higher proportion of students from disadvantaged backgrounds.

If the response of the Government to Lord Browne’s report is one that Liberal Democrats cannot accept, then arrangements will be made to enable Liberal Democrat MPs to abstain
in any vote.

9.
Relations with the EU

We agree that the British Government will be a positive participant in the European Union, playing a strong and positive role with our partners, with the goal of ensuring that all the nations of Europe are equipped to face the challenges of the 21^st century: global competitiveness, global warming and global poverty.

We agree that there should be no further transfer of sovereignty or powers over the course of the next Parliament. We will examine the balance of the EU’s existing competences and will, in particular, work to limit the application of the Working Time Directive in the United Kingdom.

We agree that we will amend the 1972 European Communities Act so that any proposed future Treaty that transferred areas of power, or competences, would
be subject to a referendum on that Treaty – a ‘referendum lock’. We will amend the 1972 European Communities Act so that the use of any passerelle would require primary legislation.

We will examine the case for a United Kingdom Sovereignty Bill to make it clear that ultimate authority remains with Parliament.

We agree that Britain will not join or prepare to join the Euro in this Parliament.

We agree that we will strongly defend the UK’s national interests in the forthcoming EU budget negotiations and that the EU budget should only focus on those areas where the EU can add value.

We agree that we will press for the European Parliament only to have one seat, in Brussels.

We agree that we will approach forthcoming legislation in the area of criminal justice on a case by case basis, with a view to maximising our country’s security, protecting Britain’s civil liberties and preserving the integrity of our criminal justice system. Britain will not participate in the establishment of any European Public Prosecutor.

10. Civil liberties

The parties agree to implement a full programme of measures to reverse the substantial erosion of civil liberties under the Labour Government and roll back state intrusion.

This will include:

A Freedom or Great Repeal Bill.
The scrapping of ID card scheme, the National Identity register, the next generation of biometric passports and the Contact Point Database.
Outlawing the finger-printing of children at school without parental permission.
The extension of the scope of the Freedom of Information Act to provide greater transparency.
Adopting the protections of the Scottish model for the DNA database.
The protection of historic freedoms through the defence of trial by jury.
The restoration of rights to non-violent protest.
The review of libel laws to protect freedom of speech.
Safeguards against the misuse of anti-terrorism legislation.
Further regulation of CCTV.
Ending of storage of internet and email records without good reason.
A new mechanism to prevent the proliferation of unnecessary new criminal offences.

11. Environment

The parties agree to implement a full programme of measures to fulfil our joint ambitions for a low carbon and eco-friendly economy, including:

The establishment of a smart grid and the roll-out of smart meters.
The full establishment of feed-in tariff systems in electricity – as well as the maintenance of banded ROCs.
Measures to promote a huge increase in energy from waste through anaerobic digestion.
The creation of a green investment bank.
The provision of home energy improvement paid for by the savings from lower energy bills.
Retention of energy performance certificates while scrapping HIPs.
Measures to encourage marine energy.
The establishment of an emissions performance standard that will prevent coal-fired power stations being built unless they are equipped with sufficient CCS to
meet the emissions performance standard.
The establishment of a high-speed rail network.
The cancellation of the third runway at Heathrow.
The refusal of additional runways at Gatwick and Stansted.
The replacement of the Air Passenger Duty with a per flight duty.
The provision of a floor price for carbon, as well as efforts to persuade the EU to move towards full auctioning of ETS permits.
Measures to make the import or possession of illegal timber a criminal offence.
Measures to promote green spaces and wildlife corridors in order to halt the loss of habitats
and restore biodiversity.
Mandating a national recharging network for electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles.
Continuation of the present Government’s proposals for public sector investment in CCS technology for four coal-fired power stations; and a specific commitment
to reduce central government carbon emissions by 10 per cent within 12 months.
We are agreed that we would seek to increase the target for energy from renewable sources, subject to the advice of the Climate Change Committee.

Liberal Democrats have long opposed any new nuclear construction. Conservatives, by contrast, are committed to allowing the replacement of existing nuclear power stations provided they are subject to the normal planning process for major projects (under a new national planning statement) and provided also that they
receive no public subsidy.

We have agreed a process that will allow Liberal Democrats to maintain their opposition to nuclear power while permitting the government to bring forward the national
planning statement for ratification by Parliament so that new nuclear construction becomes possible.

This process will involve:

the government completing the drafting of a national planning statement and putting it before Parliament;
specific agreement that a Liberal Democrat spokesman will speak against the planning statement, but that Liberal Democrat MPs will abstain; and
clarity that this will not be regarded as an issue of confidence.

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About the author
Sunny Hundal is editor of LC. Also: on Twitter, at Pickled Politics and Guardian CIF.
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Reader comments

1:48 pm, May 12, 2010

1. Richard Blogger

Fuck all about the NHS. This is clearly a stitch up by the ConDems.

Mark my words, both LibDem and Cons have plans to make the NHS a commissioner-only and not a provider of healthcare. What this means in practice is that your local NHS hospital will slowly close down as services are cherry picked by private corporations. The eventual aim is for there to be a healthcare market with private hospitals “competing for patients”. Clegg is in favour of an insurance system to pay for healthcare (that’s me fucked, as someone with a chronic, and uninsurable condition).

Hannan’s “60 year mistake” will not survive the next five years

1:50 pm, May 12, 2010

2. ukliberty

section 10 is bloody good isn’t it? fingers crossed.

1:57 pm, May 12, 2010

3. Rob

@Richard Blogger: fuck all except “funding for the NHS should increase in real terms in each year of the Parliament”.

1:58 pm, May 12, 2010

4. astateofdenmark

Sounds unbelievably good. Elected Lords. Individual Voter Registration. Great Reform Bill. Rolling back new labour’s attack on civil liberties. Scrapping ID Cards and 3rd Runway. God I hope this is true.

1:58 pm, May 12, 2010

5. Galen10

A turd, however lovingly polished, remains a turd.

If they do all the things in section 10, great…. but let’s face it, it’s only one section of the whole, and giving them credit for being less inimical to civil liberties than New Labour smacks of damning with faint praise.

2:06 pm, May 12, 2010

6. Rogue_Leader

“Labour’s financial crisis”?

Proportional Representation for peers but not for the commons?

Also, no comment on ‘Labour’s’ Digital Millenium Economy Bill. But then, where are the tabloid scare stories about that?

2:12 pm, May 12, 2010

7. ottocrat

Some good (civil liberties), some bad (electoral reform), some horrible (relations with the EU). But what on earth is this??

“to avoid a repeat of Labour’s financial crisis”

That’s just childish.

2:19 pm, May 12, 2010

8. Mr S. Pill

“work to limit the application of the Working Time Directive in the United Kingdom.”

oh FFS.

2:20 pm, May 12, 2010

9. Richard Blogger

@3. Rob did you read what I said? It says fuck-all about what they intend to do. The “funding for the NHS should increase in real terms in each year of the Parliament” was well trailed during the campaign, as well as “cut admin by a third” – which no one knows how it can be implemented since it is the internal market not targets that takes up the majority of admin.

2:22 pm, May 12, 2010

10. ukliberty

Galen10,

2

A turd, however lovingly polished, remains a turd.

If they do all the things in section 10, great…. but let’s face it, it’s only one section of the whole, and giving them credit for being less inimical to civil liberties than New Labour smacks of damning with faint praise.

Um, the verbs “repeal” and “scrap”, to name but two, suggest rather more to me than “being less inimical”…

2:23 pm, May 12, 2010

11. ukliberty

It seems to me it’s well past time for Labour supporters to get over the fact that their party is not the party of civil liberties – it has after all spent the last 13 years trying to destroy them.

2:24 pm, May 12, 2010

12. Richard Blogger

Section 10:

“The scrapping of ID card scheme, the National Identity register, the next generation of biometric passports and the Contact Point Database.”

Nice try. Except that without biometric passports no Brit will be able to enter the US, so that part is cloud cuckoo land. The rest (NIR, ID cards), unfortunately, lead on from the biometric passports. I’ll like to see how Dave will persuade the US congress (Obama has no power there) that British citizens should be made a special case, especially since they will shout back “Richard Reid”!

2:35 pm, May 12, 2010

13. Terence Eden

@Rogue_Leader – it means you get your geographical representation in the commons and your wider party political representation in the Lords.

I think it’s a reasonable compromise.

2:44 pm, May 12, 2010

14. J

@8 – I noticed that.

What a rip! (But hardly surprising…)

2:57 pm, May 12, 2010

15. Galen10

Well, even assuming this document is a true refelction of what they propose, it hasn’t happened yet. Reminds me of the Spartan reply to Philip of Macedon’s threat that he would utterly destroy them if he invaded: “If”.

I’m not saying “repeal” and “scrap” aren’t good things (when and “if” they happen), I’m just saying that your excitement about one part of the programme doesn’t make the rest of it smell good.

3:01 pm, May 12, 2010

16. Mark Lightwood

Quite good, don’t you think Sunny? Better than what Labour have done in 13 years.

3:04 pm, May 12, 2010

17. sl

OT, sort of

at least the stupid tweets have been demoted – well done

3:25 pm, May 12, 2010

18. Richard Blogger

It has only been out for a couple of hours and already Cameron is breaking the pledges. The FT reports:

“Cameron drops pledge to raise NHS spending in real terms”

The coalition document is yet to be published. But I’ve been told that the ring-fence on NHS funding has been lifted. The exact wording is:

“We will increase NHS spending in every year of the parliament.”

This meets the Lib Dem policy of not protecting any department from public spending cuts, while guaranteeing that health funding will at least be flat in cash terms .

Of course Cameron was never going to honour that campaign pledge, but it seems that the LibDems have forced his hand early. Hospital closures by the end of the year, and there is nothing we can do about it.

3:34 pm, May 12, 2010

19. Claude

The welfare bit is what worries me the most.

It’s quite telling that so many Lib Dem members are cheering potential improvements regarding civil liberties (fair enough, I say, Labour really did take the piss on that one) BUT – big but- little is being said about welfare.

The Tory agenda is to be steamrolled in, with no mitigating factors. They even got Iain Duncan Smith as Work & Pensions Secretary, which is proper back to vintage Tory stuff last seen with Howard, Shephard and Portillo at the helm back in the days of John Major.

This is bad. Basically this is a man, IDS, whose social policies could sit with ease in a George W Bush administration (and in fact thay are actively cheered by the Daily Mail). The LibDems are going to support him. Grrrreat.

So, to our Lib Dem friends.
Remember to tell the hundreds of thousands who will lose their jobs through mega cuts and will then be forced to go on compulsory welfare to work programmes that at least we got a fixed parliament.

I’m sure you will make their day.

3:37 pm, May 12, 2010

20. Claude

Warning. Comments not appearing.

3:38 pm, May 12, 2010

21. Mr Eugenides

Have not yet read this document in full, but if even half of it is enacted, I’m going to look forward to seeing how an avowedly “Liberal” blog finds ways to paint this government as the second coming of King Herod, as Sunny is clearly champing to do.

Some good stuff in here.

3:43 pm, May 12, 2010

22. John B

Wow, the Lib Dems have secured even less than I’d assumed this morning.

On the civil liberties front, there is *nothing* here worth bothering with, except the money saved from scrapping the ID card programme (since it was always going to be impossible to make the DB work – see the much simpler but still impossible NPFIT – the civil liberties implications were always irrelevant). No storage of data “without good reason” is exactly where we were before: the government can always say “all internet records to be stored for 2 years to prevent terrorism, which is a good reason”. And the fact that there’s no explicit commitment to retain the Human Rights Act is *bloody disturbing*.

As I suggested earlier, the “electoral reform” is a commitment to a referendum where the Tories aren’t bound to support the “yes” campaign, and which will therefore probably fail. The Lords rhetoric looks pretty, but it’s just a guarantee to have a commission which will report this year / next year / sometime / never and to slightly favour the Tories in allocation of new peers in the meantime.

Not locking up kids for being foreign is nice. An absolute cap on non-EU foreigners is nasty. So that one’s 50/50.

3:45 pm, May 12, 2010

23. Dunc

Sounds unbelievably good.

If something sounds too good to be true, it usually is. Remember all the wonderful things Tony promised us in ’97? I’m not believing a single fucking word of it until I see it in action, and even then I’ll be damn suspicious.

4:14 pm, May 12, 2010

24. John B

The fact that the HRA is missing from section 10, whereas a “great repeal” is mentioned, makes me bloody nervous. Am I just being paranoid?

4:31 pm, May 12, 2010

25. June Birch

Lib. Dem nuclear agreement can only be judged by history..I would say it is a tragedy in embryo.. We have renewable alternatives, much better and safer. This should be a conscience vote.

5:05 pm, May 12, 2010

26. Barney

No need for aononymity now – its online on the Lib Dem site: http://www.libdems.org.uk/latest_news_detail.aspx?title=Conservative_Liberal_Democrat_coalition_agreements&pPK=2697bcdc-7483-47a7-a517-7778979458ff

5:09 pm, May 12, 2010

27. Vladimir

This looks pretty good. Great news for all liberals, including right-wing liberals like myself.

I didn’t realise the LibDems were anti-nuclear. Glad they’ve been forced to drop that idiotic policy. If we really want to lower the carbon footprint, nuclear is the only way to go.

On the NHS, I look forward to whatever reforms they might come up with. If they can make the system a bit less pointlessly inefficient, perhaps by introducing Swedish-style partial privatisation, then perhaps some of the hospitals closed by Labour will be able to reopen!

5:12 pm, May 12, 2010

28. Yurrzem!

@25 June Birch

Time to drop that particular Green shiboleth. We need nuclear. http://web.me.com/stewartbrand/DISCIPLINE_footnotes/4_-_New_Nukes.html

5:34 pm, May 12, 2010

29. Shatterface

Anaerobic digestion? Don’t like the sound of that. Exercise on a full stomach? No thanks! Quite like the idea of replacing the motorways with a Scalextric though. Time to make a green case for nuclear power too.

If even half of part 10 is carried out that’s a massive victory over control freakery. So what if the Americans won’t let us in? Fuck ‘em. Why should out entire population sacrifice their civil liberties for the convenience of a few tourists who want to gawp at the Grand Canyon. It’s a big hole, get over it.

6:31 pm, May 12, 2010

30. Cabalamat

@1 Richard Blogger: Mark my words, both LibDem and Cons have plans to make the NHS a commissioner-only and not a provider of healthcare.

I don’t see anything wrong with that, in principle. After all, at the moment, the NHS is a commissioner, but not a producer, of the drugs it uses, hospital beds, and vast amounts of other things that it buys, running from biros to computers. Unless you are suggesting that the NHS should itself produce all these itself (which would be silly), there’s no difference in principle for the NHS to commission medical treatment to be provided by other organisations.

7:10 pm, May 12, 2010

31. John Palmer

“legislation will be brought forward to make provision for fixed term parliaments of five years. This legislation will also provide for dissolution if 55% or more of the House votes in favour.”

If you can’t get an overall majority then change the rules so you don’t need one. Once the Lib/Dems sign up for this their days are numbered.

55% of 650 is 357.5 say 358 MP’s needed to overthrow the government. Only 292 Conservative MP’s needed to support the government in a vote of confidence. The 305 they got (not including the Speaker) should allow 13 to go down the pub and have a good laugh.

8:01 pm, May 12, 2010

32. bluepillnation

“The parties agree to phase out the default retirement age and hold a review to set the date at which the state pension age starts to rise to 66, although it will not
be sooner than 2016 for men and 2020 for women. We agree to end the rules requiring compulsory annuitisation at 75.”

“We will examine the balance of the EU’s existing competences and will, in particular, work to limit the application of the Working Time Directive in the United Kingdom.”

So basically, taken to a logical conclusion what they’re saying is that they want to make it compulsory to work whatever hours our bosses demand, no matter how unreasonable, and that if we haven’t earned enough for a nest egg, we’re supposed to work until we die.

Good stuff. I’m not sure I like this kind of “progressiveness”

8:04 pm, May 12, 2010

33. JM

The fixed term parliament sounds good but it will take 55% to dissolve parliament sounds highly undemocratic. Conveniently the Tories have 47% of the seats so even if the Liberals fall out of love with them, they’ll be nothing anyone can do.

Sounds a highly regressive and bloody convenient reform.

8:54 pm, May 12, 2010

34. Eccles

I’m reminded of part of a speech I heard almost a quarter of century ago by someone shedding crocidile tears for the victims of Tory Thatcherite policies; who stood by and let others fight the battles he and his cabal did not have the stomach to fight and whose mindset lives on today in the Sectarian Tribalist Tendancy who would rather be losers, who would rather sit sniping on the sidelines than give up its self-proclaimed right to claim exclusive ownership of the terms “left”; “progressive” and “radical” by letting anyone else not part of the “tribe” into the enclosure they have set up as the paternalistic vanguard of ordinary working people.

Those over about the age of 40-45 may recognise it. I’ve updated it to reflect what is, sadly, the situation as it stands:

“I’ll tell you what happens with authoritarian tribalists. You start with a far-fetched series of policies designed to placate the right wing media, the unelected money markets and neo-con interests.

And these are then pickled into a rigid micro-managerialist dogma, a code, and you go through the years sticking to that, misplaced, outdated, irrelevant to the real needs.

And you end in the grotesque spectacle of a Tory Government, a Tory Government, scuttling round Parliament and the Country committing themselves to scrapping ID cards and a National Identity register of its own people; outlawing the DNA fingerprinting of schoolchildren; stopping the retention of innocent peoples DNA; restoring the rights to non-violent protest; defending trial by jury; reviewing the libel laws to protect freedom of speech; ending the detention of children for immigration purposes; further regulating CCTV cameras; doing away with the proliferation of unnecessary new criminal offences; and restoring the state pension link to earnings.

Anti-civil rights policies and legislation all of which were introduced by a Labour Government, a Labour Government. I tell you – and you’ll listen – you can’t play politics with people’s civil rights and people’s pensions and people’s lives.”

It is the tribalist majority within the Labour Party – the old right wing authoritarians and their blairite fellow travellers at all levels who are the ones who have put us in this position.

They are spinning like a top and lying like troopers to deflect the blame for their own cowardice and ego’s onto others.

They have lost all credible claim to be progressive and of the “left”. Until they have cleared out the dead wood, got rid of their control freak mindset, and learned how to work with others of like mind they deserve to be sidelined.

They have a great deal to answer for in spurning the opportunity to stop the damage of a Tory Administration.

9:04 pm, May 12, 2010

35. John Palmer

“Liberal Democrats have long opposed any new nuclear construction. Conservatives, by contrast, are committed to allowing the replacement of existing nuclear power stations provided they are subject to the normal planning process for major projects (under a new national planning statement) and provided also that they receive no public subsidy.

We have agreed a process that will allow Liberal Democrats to maintain their opposition to nuclear power while permitting the government to bring forward the national planning statement for ratification by Parliament so that new nuclear construction becomes possible.

This process will involve:

* the government completing the drafting of a national planning statement and putting it before Parliament;
* specific agreement that a Liberal Democrat spokesman will speak against the planning statement, but that Liberal Democrat MPs will abstain; and
* clarity that this will not be regarded as an issue of confidence.”

So the Lib/Dems have signed up for an agreement where they are allowed to speak out against a proposal but are NOT allowed to vote against it?

Furthermore this is not regarded as a vote of confidence?

Haven’t the Tories read their own agreement? They have already rigged the percentages so that they can always win a vote of confidence, they only need 292 votes under their proposed vote rigging legislation to block any motion.

9:36 pm, May 12, 2010

36. Jim

Mark @ 16

Getting the Tories to right something that reads well on paper is not difficult. After all concepts like ‘Care in the Community’ sounded great when they were announced, but nowhere did they say that people with mental health issues would be expected to wander about seaside towns whilst the B&B hostels were closed during the day.

I think you will find that many of those policies will bear little relation to the actual practices.

1:45 am, May 13, 2010

37. John

Holy crap, I’ve only got up to the environment section so far, but this is seriously good stuff O_O

Dare I allow myself a speckle of optimism?

9:36 am, May 13, 2010

38. ukliberty

Richard Blogger,

Section 10:

“The scrapping of ID card scheme, the National Identity register, the next generation of biometric passports and the Contact Point Database.”

Nice try. Except that without biometric passports no Brit will be able to enter the US, so that part is cloud cuckoo land. The rest (NIR, ID cards), unfortunately, lead on from the biometric passports. I’ll like to see how Dave will persuade the US congress (Obama has no power there) that British citizens should be made a special case, especially since they will shout back “Richard Reid”!

Labour’s proposals went well beyond international requirements. The National Identity Register as proposed is not prerequisite for a functional and internationally accepted passport system.

Galen10,

… I’m not saying “repeal” and “scrap” aren’t good things (when and “if” they happen), I’m just saying that your excitement about one part of the programme doesn’t make the rest of it smell good.

I did say I was keeping my fingers crossed. I’m not so much excited as I am quietly hopeful.

10:12 am, May 13, 2010

39. ukliberty

John B,

… On the civil liberties front, there is *nothing* here worth bothering with, except the money saved from scrapping the ID card programme (since it was always going to be impossible to make the DB work – see the much simpler but still impossible NPFIT – the civil liberties implications were always irrelevant). No storage of data “without good reason” is exactly where we were before: the government can always say “all internet records to be stored for 2 years to prevent terrorism, which is a good reason”.

That would be Labour’s ‘good’ reason. The evidence over the past 13 years suggests the Tories and LibDems will be rather more interested in procedural correctness and proportionate responses; there is a good reason to store records from specific conversations / people but there is not a good reason to store records of everyone in the UK.

I disagree with you John, I think there are messages in section 10 about the sorts of things that will not be infringed and I think that’s important, not least because we can point the finger if they turn out to be liars.

And the fact that there’s no explicit commitment to retain the Human Rights Act is *bloody disturbing*.

… The fact that the HRA is missing from section 10, whereas a “great repeal” is mentioned, makes me bloody nervous. Am I just being paranoid?

I don’t see much value in reading into the absence of things. There are lots of things they haven’t mentioned – for example I’d liked to have seen them say that “we aren’t thinking about recording everyone’s land, sea and air journeys”.

Even if there is a plan to get rid of the HRA, the ECHR will continue to provide protection so long as we’re signed up to it – incidentally, the UK under Labour is the only party to the ECHR that has derogated from it. I think the Tory position has been one of “let’s tell our supporters we will do something about the HRA even though it won’t make any real difference and we can pin any blame on Europe”.

12:28 pm, May 13, 2010

40. ukliberty

Changed my mind about the lack of mention of HRA and it’s importance.

For one thing the queue for the ECtHR is ridiculously long as it is.

1:17 pm, May 13, 2010

41. ukliberty

Henry Porter noticed the omission of control orders.

8:29 pm, May 13, 2010

42. Dave Clegg

We can rebuild our party from within the halls of power even if we have to sacrifice a few ideological goats with the Condems.