Three of us from Newcastle under Lyme attended the Lib-Dem
conference in York last weekend and we are pleased to say there were good
debates. There were a variety of types of people speaking, including an
encouraging number of younger people; the youngest was 15 years old who spoke
extremely well.
The conference agreed to have a registered supporters
scheme, but voted that people who are members of another party could not be
registered in the scheme, registered supporters cannot vote for the leader of
the party and the leader should be an MP. Only members can be officers of any
kind in the party and only members can vote at conference.
The supporters will have the right to attend meetings and
give their views and also serve on policy working groups.
As chair of the Lib-Dem Education Association, I spoke in
the debate on ‘Eradicating Racial Inequality’, advocating the education section
of the policy paper that accompanied the motion. Although much progress
has been made in the UK in recent decades, there are worrying signs among some
sections of the population that this issue still needs to be tackled.
Another matter of concern to me is the demise of local
services, so it was good to have a debate calling for a major re-investment in
local youth services.
I hope you are well and can consider ways in which you can
contribute to our local party; we really do need new people if we are to reach
out to the local population on local and national issues and encourage support
for and understanding of, our Liberal Democrat values.
As well as outlining its principles and its
faults below, Vince has called this month (October 2018) for it to be stalled
in order to overcome the hardships it is causing and to put £3bn more into
it. The £3bn was cut from welfare
spending soon after the coalition ended.
When Lib-Dems were in government we prevented this from happening.
“The
problems stem from conflicting objectives: providing minimum family income;
providing incentives to work; simplification; and saving money. Simplification,
saving money and work incentives have taken precedence over the first, crucial,
priority.
“Practical problems have been ignored creating real hardship, payment
delays in the switchover, penalties for the self-employed; use of a single bank
account for divided families; barriers to work from lack of childcare; monthly
payments for those on weekly or casual wages; technical complexities in
establishing online payment; and the use of Universal Credit to facilitate debt
collection…
“[But] the fact that UC is becoming loathed and is being implemented
incompetently and harshly does not invalidate the reasoning behind it. I
strongly repudiate the Labour Party’s suggestion that Universal Credit should
be scrapped without being clear what the replacement is: a classic case of
soundbites taking precedence over thought-through policies .”
At the Liberal Democrat
Conference in York
on Sunday 17th March the party voted for a motion addressing the lack of
support for young people and families in the light of an increase in knife
crime.
The motion states:
“Conference calls for a major
re-investment in youth services, both universal and targeted, with national
government making youth services clearly a statutory service, working with
local government to develop clear guidance on what councils should be providing
and ensuring there is sufficient grant funding to match that service
provision.”
Due to the lack of funding
for Local Authorities there has been a decline in youth services for many years
with a massive reduction since 2015.
This not only affects crime
among young people and other kinds of misbehaviour, it affects their progress
in school and hence their future lives.
In 2013 a comprehensive report by RISE (Research and Information on State
Education) concluded that around 80% of the differences in achievement of young
people in school is due to factors outside school. In 2018, a report by the
Education Policy Institute said that in spite of great efforts, the gap between
the high achievers and the low achievers in our schools has in some communities
widened.
In another conference debate
(on racial inequality), Nigel Jones, chair of the Newcastle under Lyme Liberal Democrats, said
“Education can play a big part eradicating racial inequality, but teachers
cannot solve the ills of society on their own.”
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