The refusal of the Coalition to endorse a European Union directive to combat the trade in sex slaves and child trafficking shows the weakness of the Liberal Democrat arm of the Government. The law in question is a draft directive on preventing and combating trafficking of human beings, and protecting victims; it is currently being dealt with jointly by the European Parliament’s Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs committee and the Women Rights and Gender Equality committee.

Although Parliament’s draft report has not been voted on, it is likely to be approved with a large majority.

It would establish common EU standards for the prosecution of traffickers and greater protection for victims, meaning that, for example, women trafficked for the sex trade could not be charged with holding false immigration papers given them by traffickers.

The directive also includes the protection of children from sexual abuse, exploitation and child pornography. The need for EU action is, in part, because many victims are trafficked through Europe. It would also allow suspects to be prosecuted for offences in other member states.

European treaties give the government the option to opt-in or out, but this right was not agreed for directives such as this. On August 4, the Home Office told the BBC that the directive offered no benefits to Britain, hence the decision to opt-out. In another instance, the Home Office spokesperson told the media:

“Human trafficking is a brutal form of organised crime, and combating it is a key priority for the government. The UK already complies with most of what is required by the draft EU directive.”

Working with our neighbouring member states to combat human trafficking was at the heart of a conference held by Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) in Sheffield in 2005; Crown Prosecutor Mr Rankin said:

“At meetings such as these with our partners in the criminal justice systems across Europe, we discuss how we can work together to prevent and combat human trafficking through international co-operation, sharing best practice and improving the effectiveness of prosecutions.”

Britain’s record in tackling and convicting human traffickers has been criticised by grouns including Amnesty International, who stated in June that the UK’s new anti-trafficking measures were “not fit for purpose”. They added that the government was “breaching its obligations under the European Convention against Trafficking”.

Klara Skrivankova of Anti-Slavery International said:

“Without international co-operation, the government will lose the battle with the traffickers. By choosing not to opt in to the directive, the government is failing in its efforts to combat this transnational crime.”

New figures also show a failure to increase convictions of criminal gangs who have forced an estimated 2,600 foreign women into prostitution in brothels in England and Wales.

Only five people were convicted of human trafficking for sexual exploitation in the first six months of this year, according to the UK Human Trafficking Centre. This is compared with 33 and 34 in the previous two 12-month periods. A further nine were convicted of other offences, having been arrested on suspicion of trafficking.

Former Europe Minister, Denis MacShane has written to Nick Clegg to urge the ex-European Commission official that:

“Women in particular will be alarmed to learn that the Liberal Democrats are willing to support these efforts to weaken the directive. It is the wrong signal to send to the pimps and traffickers.

“I hope you can persuade the prime minister to drop his opt-out policy on this welcome effort to combat sex-slave trafficking.”

This is a guest cross-post by Tim Davies, originally posted on Political Innovation

The communication revolution that we’ve undergone in recent years has two big impacts:

• It changes what’s possible. It makes creating networks between people across organisations easier; it opens new ways for communication between citizens and state; it gives everyone who wants it a platform for global communication; and it makes it possible to discover local online dialogue.

• It changes citizen expectations of government. When I can follow news from my neighbour’s blog on my phone, why can’t I get updates on local services on the mobile-web?

• When I can e-mail someone across the world and be collaborating on a document in minutes, why is it so hard to have a conversation with the council down the road?

• And when brands and mainstream media are doing interactivity and engagement – why are government departments struggling with it so much?

Right now, government is missing out on significant cost saving and service-enhancing benefits from new forms of communication and collaboration. But the answers are not simply about introducing new technology – they are to be found in intentional culture change: in creating the will and the opportunity for interactive government.

There are three things we need to focus on:

• Culture change. Although there are pockets of interactivity breaking out across the public sector, it’s often counter-cultural and ‘underground’. Most staff feel constrained to work with tools given to them by IT departments, and to focus on official lines more than open conversations. Creating a culture of interactivity needs leadership from the top, and values that everyone can sign up to.

• Removing the barriers. There are literally hundreds of small daily frustrations and barriers that can get in the way of interactive government. It might be the inability of upload a photo to an online forum (interactive government has human faces…), or consent and moderation policies that cover everyone’s backs but don’t allow real voices to be heard. Instead of ignoring these barriers, we need to overcome them – to rethink them within an interactive culture that can make dialogue and change a top priority.

• Solving tough problems. Public service is tough: it has to deal with political, democratic and social pressures that would make most social media start-ups struggle. We need to think hard about how interactive technology and interactive ways of working play out in the tough cases that the public sector deals in every day.

The Interactive Charter is a project to explore how exactly we go about making government into interactive government. It’s got three parts:

• Creating a pledge – The ‘Interactive Charter’ will be a clear statement that any organization (or senior manager within an organization) can sign up to say something along the lines of “I want my organization to get interactivity; and I’ll commit to overcoming the barriers to interactive ways of working”. With a promise and commitment from the top removing the barriers should get a lot easierOf course to just hand down a pledge wouldn’t be very interactive, so we’re drafting it on Mixed Ink.

• Naming the problems…and overcoming them – We’ve already made a start over on the Interactive Charter wiki, but we would love you to join in suggesting practical challenges, and practical solutions, to interactive and digital working in government.

• Putting it into practice – We want to pilot the approach: getting top-level support, and removing the barriers to interactivity from the ground up. Could your organization be part of that?

So, if you’ve got a vision for more interactive government, you can share it by redrafting the current pledge. And if you’ve faced or solved problems around interactive government, help shape the body of knowledge around each of the barriers and their solutions on the wiki. Of course, you could also just drop in comments over on the Political Innovation blog…

About Political Innovation

We’d be very interested to hear any ideas that you have for an essay of your own – we’ll need an email and we’ll want to discuss it with you before it goes on the site. All contributions will be archived on www.politicalinnovation.org – along with details of what we’re looking for from essayists and a bunch of FAQs and a guide to how we hope the whole thing will play out.

I hope you’ll get involved in this as a commenter, participant or maybe even as an essayist. Make sure you don’t miss anything by the blog joining our Google Group, subscribing to RSS feed, getting each post emailed to you and, of course, following us on Twitter – @PICamp – and Facebook.

This article is jointly written by Shamik Das and Will Straw

With the Labour leadership race entering the home straight, the result of the Edinburgh East primary was cast in doubt this evening when it became clear that only 300 people had voted in a contest which used the wrong rules.

The Edinburgh East primary was held using first-past-the-post in contravention of the Labour party’s rulebook. A spokesman for the Labour party confirmed to Left Foot Forward that CLP supporting nominations must be held using the transferable vote system – also known as Alternative Vote – the same as used in the election itself. Around 1,000 ballot papers were distributed in recent weeks with a reported turnout of 27 per cent. The turnout was significantly lower than the 5,000 people who voted in the Bassetlaw primary.

The YouGov poll of Labour Party members last month indicated that Ed Miliband won 61 per cent of second preferences from supporters of Diane Abbott, Ed Balls, and Andy Burnham. If this held true in the Edinburgh it would have been enough to give Ed Miliband the narrowest of victories, possibly a margin of just one vote.

Local MP, Sheila Gilmore, nominated Diane Abbott but had pledged to give her vote – which is equivalent to the ballots of 1,000 members in the CLP section of the electoral college – to the winner of the primary. She will now come under pressure to organise a re-run.

While the David Miliband campaign claimed victory, a spokesman for Ed Miliband told Left Foot Forward:

“This result shows that the leadership election is absolutely all to play for. Ed intends to use the next few weeks to continue speaking to as many labour members and trade union members as possible. His message that Labour must change to win again is being well received.”

UPDATE 18.17

The David Miliband campaign have been in touch asking us to clarify that the Edinburgh East CLP’s supporting nomination went to Ed Miliband earlier this summer. The primary vote which concluded today was an indicative poll to influence Sheila Gilmore’s vote in the electoral college. It is, of course, up to the MP as to whether to cast her vote on this basis, particularly in light of the question marks over the rules used in the ballot.

UPDATE 10.15 24/8

Jon Rentoul has a blog this morning questioning the methodology used in our analysis above. I wanted to post the following comment but the Indy’s bizarre comments system won’t let me using Open ID. It’s here instead:

“A fair point and glad you liked the picture. But the reason for our post was not to conclusively suggest that Ed Miliband had won. How could we know? Indeed, the sample of 329 ABB supporters is sufficiently small that the margin of victory would have been well inside the margin of error as your post also shows.

“The point of the post was to show that the election had been conducted using an electoral system (first-past-the-post) which the party never uses and which both Milibands are committed to opposing. Given that the outcome is being used to determine how Sheila Gilmore votes, it should either be re-run or she should adopt the Burkean position of almost all her PLP colleagues and vote for the Miliband (or other candidate) that she wants to see as leader.”

They just don’t seem to learn. Barely a week after appointing famed billionaire tax avoider Sir Philip Green to advise the Government on cost-cutting, the Tories have been at it again, trying to appoint multi-millionaire tax exile David Rowland as Tory Party Treasurer. The Daily Mail got it right for once by running a series of stories on Rowland to ensure that yesterday afternoon CCHQ spiked the appointment, hours before it was scheduled to be announced.

Rowland, who is estimated to be worth £730 million, had lived in tax-haven Guernsey, but returned to the UK for the past year so he could legally make donations of £2.7m to the Tory party in the run up to this year’s election.

Even Conservative Home criticised CCHQ’s handling of Rowland’s botched non-appointment, saying “big questions need to be asked about failing to carry out due diligence on this appointment”. However, they didn’t complain when the appointment was announced on June 25th.

Back then, Rowland said:

“It is a tremendous honour that David Cameron has asked me to take on the role of Treasurer to the Conservative Party after Conference.”

Honestly, though, you’d think that after all the furore of being bankrolled by tax avoider Michael Ashcroft, the Tories would have learnt their lesson. Apparently not. Just what is it about the super rich that makes them think they don’t have to pay their fair share?

Meanwhile, following Left Foot Forward’s piece on Philip Green’s controversial appointment as Government ‘cuts Tsar’, and our exposé on the extent of Green’s tax avoidance, the Liberal Democrats have joined the criticism; Vince Cable’s adviser Matthew Oakeshott stated that Green must pay tax in the UK, saying:

“…it must be right for any British people in prominent positions in public life to be firmly resident and domiciled for UK tax purposes.”

Elsewhere, Lib Dem MPs Roger Williams and Mike Hancock expressed concern about the appointment, with Williams arguing Green’s tax arrangements should be studied by the Treasury and HMRC adding that Green’s appointment showed that “rich people can arrange their financial affairs with a great deal more latitude”, while Hancock stated that “anyone who avoids tax (should) be tackled firmly” and that he was “surprised that Clegg would want to appoint someone like that to advise him”.

No doubt when he returns from his ‘austerity’ holiday, David Cameron will be at pains to remind Britons that ‘we’re all in this together’. But the Tories’ obsession with appointing tax avoiders to high-profile positions exposes the hollowness of Cameron’s lofty words.

One could be forgiven for checking that yesterday wasn’t April 1st after waking up to the news that private equity tycoon and asset-stripper extraordinaire Philip Green has been appointed by David Cameron to head a Whitehall spending review. Green’s role will, ostensibly, be to identify inefficiencies and savings in government departments. In reality, Green will probably look to do to government what he has done to so many of the companies he has bought and sold – slash and burn.

Green is the multi-billionaire owner of the clothing retailer Arcadia, which includes Topshop and Dorothy Perkins. However, while he may be one of Britain’s most successful entrepreneurs, owning an estimated 12% per cent of Britain’s high-street shops, his billions are the result of massive tax avoidance.

Ninety two per cent of Arcadia group is owned by Green’s wife, Tina, for tax purposes. Green spends most of his time in Monaco, a tax haven, and in 2005 his company paid a £1.2 billion dividend to Tina Green. The Treasury did not receive a penny because she is a Monaco resident.

Of course, despite being morally repugnant, tax evasion the Green way is not illegal. But, as Will Straw points out in the Guardian, ‘it is certainly a poor qualification for heading up a Whitehall “external efficiency review”’.

In 2006, the BBC’s Money Programme reported that Green and his family had saved themselves nearly £300 million the previous year by living partly in Monaco. Green has at least acknowledged that his family does not live in Britain, although he claims that his family has paid capital gains and corporation tax of between £300-400m over the past five years in the UK, although this is still a very small sum for a man estimated to be worth well over £4bn.

Few could deny that Green is a brilliantly skilled money-maker and Arcadia has recorded operating profits of between £250-300m in the last three years despite the downturn. But Green is also the Tories’ fourth so-called ‘government efficiency’ adviser after former BP boss Lord Browne was appointed in June “to improve efficiency in each department”, while Sir Peter Gershon and Dr Martin Read promised the Conservatives £12bn in efficiency savings before the election.

These conflicting egos, all doing the same job, are not likely to achieve anything.

Moreover, while it is unsurprising that the Lib-Con Government of millionaires should have appointed a billionaire to look for efficiency savings, the appointment is surely a PR disaster – for one thing Green is a forceful man with a shorter fuse than Colonel Gaddafi – and his appointment will undoubtedly increase Cabinet tensions, despite the warm accolades that were heaped on Green by Government ministers yesterday.

Cabinet Office Minister Francis Maude praised Green’s “immense commercial experience”, adding that he had a “fantastic track record”. Meanwhile, Lib Dem Chief Secretary Danny Alexander claimed that Green’s review would help the government “totally rethink” the way it spends public money. Green will be supported by a team of civil servants and report directly to Maude and Alexander.

However, while his over-promoted colleague may be sanguine about this highly controversial appointment, it may push his Lib Dem colleague, business secretary Vince Cable, towards the door marked resignation. Cable was clearly not consulted on the appointment, and when interviewed on Friday, said “there’s a lot I could say on this, but I’d better miss this one out”, adding he was “tempted to comment, but I think I’d better not”.

Indeed, in November 2009, Cable strongly criticised Scottish first minister Alex Salmond when Salmond appointed Jim McColl, also a Monaco-based tax exile, as one of his economic advisors, stating that “there is growing intolerance of British companies and the super-rich who dodge taxes. Having an adviser who is also a tax exile is completely incompatible and totally unacceptable”. With Cable’s recent green paper on bank lending having been watered down by the Treasury so much as to be virtually meaningless, Green’s appointment may be the final straw.

Furthermore, the focus on what are, in relative terms, small government efficiency savings, is a further sign of the coalition’s short-sightedness. As Left Foot Forward’s Will Straw has pointed out, David Cameron wrote in The Sun this week that “benefit fraud is the first and the deepest cut we will make”, blithely ignoring the fact that there is just £1.5bn in benefit and tax credit fraud compared to an estimated £17bn of tax avoidance, evasion and non-payment identified in HMRC’s Protecting Tax Revenues report. In other words, tax dodging dwarfs welfare and tax credit fraud by a factor of more than 10 to one.

In this vein, Paul Kenny, the general secretary of the GMB, struck an appropriately sarcastic tone when he expressed his hope that Green would use his “experience and knowledge to help the government deal with tax avoidance schemes give the government good advice in closing the loopholes”; well said, Paul – but appointing a tax evader to look at ways to cut public spending must be second nature to a party that has spent the past decade being bankrolled by one.

Gaffe-prone work and pensions minister Chris Grayling has made another stunning statistical screw-up – over-estimating the proportion of London households in which no one has ever worked by a factor of more than 3:1.

City AM reveals that Grayling’s DWP:

…rapped out a press release claiming that there are 71,000 households in London where no-one has ever worked, equivalent to 23 per cent of the capital. Perturbed by the maths, a conscientious City A.M.er rang up to check the figures, to be greeted by a red-faced spinner.

“It’s actually 61,000 households, equivalent to just seven per cent of London,” she explained, apologetically.

This isn’t the first run-in Grayling has had with a calculator, of course: earlier this year, as shadow home secretary, he was publicly rebuked by the head of the UK Statistics Authority for manipulating crime statistic comparisons in the election…

Since the turn of the year, Left Foot Forward has exposed and chronicled many more Grayling gaffes:

• February 3rd: Grayling claims there was a “98 per cent increase in serious violent crime” under Labour – the true figure is actually a 43 per cent fall.

• March 9th: Grayling claims there was a 44 per cent increase in violent crime – yet failed to release any details, figures or sources to back him up.

• March 20th: Grayling is caught on camera condemning the principle behind David Cameron’s unilateral bank tax at a public meeting.

• April 4th: Grayling is secretly recorded saying hotel owners “should have the right” to bar gay couples from their premises – putting him at odds with the image of the ‘new’ Tory party.

• April 9th: Grayling is filmed on a council estate near King’s Cross station and fails to make the link between poor social housing and drug use, then later that day blunders on the issue of youth reoffending.

• April 20th: Out of hiding, Grayling refuses to say he regrets his homophobic B&B remarks – only to be slapped down by David Cameron later that same day.

• April 23rd: Grayling fails to welcome the latest fall in violent crime, bizarrely claiming the fall in violent crime is evidence that Britain is a “more dangerous country” than before.

• April 27th: Two independent fact checking websites further undermine Grayling’s claims about violent crime; once again he refueses to provide any evidence for his claims.

How would we fill our webspace without him…

Michael Gove’s boast that “over 1,000 schools” had applied for academy freedoms have been exposed as wildly off target with the revelation that just over 150 had in fact done so. Also queried in the wake of the figures is the education secretary’s justification for rushing through the academies bill, telling the Today programme last week that “hundreds” of schools were anxious to convert.

The overestimation of the number of schools applying for academy freedoms follows Gove’s litany of errors over the announcement of the Building Schools for the Future scrappage, described as “intolerable” and “astonishing” by Labour MPs, and a “regrettable error” by the man himself.

Shadow education secretary and Labour leadership candidate Ed Balls today seized on Gove’s latest blunder:

“Michael Gove railroaded the Academies Bill through Parliament in a way that’s only normally done for emergencies like anti-terrorism legislation. He said this was because hundreds of schools wanted to become Academies, over a thousand schools had applied and many of them wanted to open in September.

“Now barely ten per cent of that number, around 100, have even applied for Academy status and none of them will convert in September, Michael Gove must explain why he rushed this Bill and misleadingly claimed that more than one thousand schools had applied. It seems to me that the real reason for the rush was to avoid proper scrutiny for a deeply flawed piece of legislation.”

In a DfE press release in early June, Gove had originally claimed:

“The response has been overwhelming. In just one week, over 1100 schools have applied. Of these, 626 are outstanding schools, including over 250 primary schools, nearly 300 secondary schools (over half of all the outstanding secondary schools in the country) and over 50 special schools.”

On June 2nd, the DfE said the total number of schools who have applied for academy freedoms was 1,114: 488 non-outstanding schools and 626 ‘outstanding’ schools, of which 273 were primary schools and 299 secondary schools; now, however, the figure is 158 – 110 secondaries and 46 primary.

Balls today added:

“Michael Gove must now publish the criteria he is using to decide which schools will be granted Academy status and which won’t. He said outstanding schools would be ‘pre-approved’, but we already know that at least one of them has been rejected.

“Just like the chaotic announcement on school building cuts it seems that arbitrary decisions about schools are being made by Mr Gove and his Department. This is what happens when local councils and local communities are cut out of the picture and decisions about hundreds of individual schools are made at the centre by Ministers.”

The question of when exactly the Liberal Democrats u-turned over the speed of tackling the deficit reared its head again today when Bank of England Governor Mervyn King appeared before the Treasury Select Committee in Parliament – in particular Nick Clegg’s claim that he had changed his mind after a personal warning from the Governor.

As Paul Waugh reports, King was unhappy Clegg had used his conversation with him as an excuse. Responding to questioning from Labour MP Chuka Umunna, he said:

“I don’t think central bankers ever feel comfortable when they are drawn into comments by politicians.”

Adding:

“I said nothing that wasn’t already in the public domain. My position hadn’t changed.”

Watch the exchange:

During the election campaign, the Institute for Fiscal Studies examined whether the Liberal Democrats were “planning to be more ambitious than Labour in reducing the deficit”, concluding:

“If anything the manifesto implies the opposite: it says that a Liberal Democrat government would carry out a Spending Review over the summer and autumn ‘with the objective of identifying the remaining [our italics] cuts needed to, at a minimum, halve the deficit by 2013-14′.

“At face value this might suggest a less ambitious plan to reduce the deficit overall than that implied by the forecasts in the Budget. The Budget predicted that the deficit (total government borrowing) would be down to 5.2% of national income in 2013-14, whereas halving it means that it need not be reduced below 5.9% of national income (half the 11.8% forecast for 2009-10).

“But the Liberal Democrats tell us that this promise to “at a minimum, halve the deficit” should be taken as shorthand for matching the deficit reduction path set out in the Budget. So, overall, they are no more or less ambitious than the Government.“

Indeed, in January Vince Cable had said:

“My party takes the view that the government’s eight-year plan, with a four-year halving of the deficit, is a reasonable starting point…

“The time to start cutting the budget deficit and its speed must be decided by a series of objective tests which include the rate of recovery, the level of unemployment, the availability of credit to businesses and the government’s ability to borrow in international markets on good terms.”

Of course the Lib Dems now support an additional £32 billion of spending cuts above and beyond Labour’s plans in this parliament; as Waugh points out, Clegg initially put this down to a the result of a private conversation with the Governor, telling The Observer:

“He [King] couldn’t have been more emphatic. He said: ‘If you don’t do this, then because of the deterioration of market conditions it will be even more painful to do it later.’”

After the Forgemasters debacle, we know all he likes to change his mind, but what excuse will he use this time to justify his decision?

With controversy about the Government’s Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill rumbling on, voices from the devolved administrations have expressed their concern with the planned timing of the vote.

Wales’ Chief Electoral Officer has declared it “vital” that the Welsh public have full confidence in the electoral system, ahead of next year’s elections.

The comments, by Ian Kelsall will once again raise concerns about the problems that could be caused by holding on the same day votes for the devolved institutions and local councils, a referendum on the Alternative Vote, and a Wales-only ballot on further powers for Cardiff Bay.

In 2007, the Scottish Parliamentary Elections were marked by scenes of chaos as voters were faced with multiple ballot papers, each under a different system.

In the latest warning, Kelsall concludes:

“Next year voters in Wales will have several opportunities to have their say at the ballot box.

“It’s vital that they have confidence in the electoral process and the UK Government addresses some of the areas where change is needed.”

His remarks come as over 40 Conservative MPs signed a parliamentary Early Day Motion (EDM 613) expressing their concern that the proposed date of the AV referendum would clash with the elections to the devolved bodies. In doing so, the motion cited Electoral Commission advice in 2002, which made clear its unease at holding referendums on major policy issues on the same day as other polls. Among the concerns it raised was a warning that:

“There is a risk that the dominance of the referendum issue would influence other polls to an extent that may compromise the electorate’s will in those other polls.”

Meanwhile, the Interim Electoral Management Board for Scotland has written to both Nick Clegg and Scottish Secretary, Danny Alexander to express its concerns at holding a poll on AV at the same time as elections to Holyrood. In particular, the board warned:

• Holding a referendum on AV would need to be administered based on Westminster constituencies, while polling for Holyrood elections is administered based on different boundaries. This could mean some people having to cast their votes at two separate polling stations.

• Under current law, the elections would also have to be treated as two separate polls, requiring two voting cards and two lists of eligible voters.

What is more, following the chaotic scenes that followed the 2007 Scottish Parliamentary Elections, the report into the fiasco, drafted by Ron Gould cautioned against combining more than one poll in two days (p. 114 – 115).

Responding to the latest developments, Shadow Scotland Office Minister, Ann McKechin said of the ConDem coalition:

“It is an act of disrespect not to have even thought about the consequences for Scotland.”

Speaking in the House of Commons however, Nick Clegg said that it was “disrespectful” to suggest that voters “could not make two different decisions at the same time.”

The Alternative Vote is a superior electoral system to first-past-the-post and should be supported if there is a referendum. But the coalition’s Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill also contains clauses that would herald unfair boundary reforms. To accompany Next Left’s examination of the politics behind the move, Left Foot Forward looks at the main arguments against the boundary reform process.

1. The Bill prevents equal representation

While everyone accepts the principled case for equal-sized seats, time must be taken to ensure that the equalisation is of those entitled to vote rather than those already registered to vote.

In 2005 the Electoral Commission estimated that 3.5 million eligible voters were missing from the electoral roll in England and Wales alone. But that was based on five-year-old figures. More recent estimates suggest the figure for the UK today is closer to 6 million. According to an Electoral Commission investigation published in March this year, “under-registration is notably higher than average among 17-24 year olds (56 per cent not registered), private sector tenants (49%) and black and minority ethnic British residents (31%)”, finding that:

“The highest concentrations of under-registration are most likely to be found in metropolitan areas, smaller towns and cities with large student populations, and coastal areas with significant population turnover and high levels of social deprivation.”

As John Costello, writing for this blog, wrote:

“By failing to factor them into his arithmetical review of constituency boundaries, Mr Clegg will be distorting the electoral map of Britain for good, and diluting the representation of people from poorer social groups in the process.”

A proper registration drive must take place before boundaries are redrawn.

2. The Bill gives the Liberal Democrats a partisan advantage

Two parliamentary seats – the Western Isles (SNP) and Orkney and Shetland Islands (Lib Dem) – have been exempted from the need to meet new quotas because of their low population density.

But as John Costello has outlined:

“in practice other seats are spared by special “geographical exemptions” that appear to have been devised with Lib Dem seats in the Scottish Highlands in mind. The Bill states that no seat can be enlarged beyond 13,000 square kilometres. Alongside that, tucked away in Schedule 2, Rule 4(2), is a previously unmentioned exemption that, in addition to the 13,000 sq km limit, constituencies larger than 12,000 sq km are freed from the need to hit the quota of registered electors.”

Seats that will be spared from being broken up include the Liberal Democrat constituencies of Ross, Skye and Lochaber; Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross; and Argyll and Bute.

Completing the boundary changes by 2013 will also lock the public out of deliberations. So much for “[handing] power back to the people” as Nick Clegg claimed in his first speech as Deputy Prime Minister.

3. The Bill does not correct distortions in the electoral system

On the Today programme this morning, Evan Davies asked Jack Straw about the disproportionality in the system which meant the Conservatives needed a large lead in votes in order to form a majority. The 1998 Jenkins ‘Commission on the Voting System’ looked at the issue of ‘bias’ and described it as one of the defects of First-Past-The-Post but described it as “very difficult if not impossible to correct”. Meanwhile, Dr. David Butler, the eminent psephologist, was asked to convene a group of academics – including Vernon Bogdanor, John Curtice, and Patrick Dunleavy – to consider a series of questions including, “Can deviation from proportionality under the current system be corrected to any significant degree by changing the criteria for redrawing constituency boundaries?” They replied:

“The principal sources of disproportionality have nothing to do with boundary-drawing or the detailed statutory rules which the Boundary Commissioners have to apply. Changes in these rules would do very little to make results more proportional…

“In general, no significant reduction in disproportionality can be expected from further action to improve the workings of FPTP.”

More recently, the Independent cited new research at the University of Plymouth which set out why the changes would not correct the problems with the current electoral system:

“The geography of each party’s support base is much more important, so changes in the redistribution procedure are unlikely to have a substantial impact and remove the significant disadvantage currently suffered by the Conservative Party.”

4. A smaller House of Commons will be be less representative

As Sunder Katwala has outlined on Next Left, “a smaller Commons will almost certainly delay and slow down progress towards gender equality in the House of Commons.”

Katwala explains that since 232 new MPs were elected in 2010, the reduction in the size of the House makes it extremely likely that the new intake in 2015 will be “one of the smallest in recent political history”. This will have a knock on effect since, “new cohorts of entries to the House of Commons are very likely to be more equal than the House as a whole in terms of both gender and ethnicity.”

***

The Spectator’s David Blackburn has some advice for David Cameron today suggesting that he should, “Detach the boundaries changes clauses from the AV bill, and then re-introduce them in a separate bill.”

This is a good idea as it would mean that Labour MPs could heartily support the AV bill while continuing a principled opposition to the proposed boundary changes. Reformers should encourage the Coalition to do just that.

UPDATE 10.13

David Cameron this morning accused Labour of “complete and utter opportunism” on the Parliamentary Voting Bill. The wording of Labour’s amendment makes it clear that this is not the case:

“That this House, whilst affirming its belief that there should be a referendum on moving to the Alternative Vote system for elections to the House of Commons, declines to give a Second Reading to the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill because it combines that objective with entirely unrelated provisions designed to gerrymander constituencies by imposing a top-down, hasty and undemocratic review of boundaries, the effect of which would be to exclude millions of eligible but unregistered voters from the calculation of the electoral average and to deprive local communities of their long established right to trigger open and transparent public inquiries into the recommendations of a Boundary Commission, thereby destroying a bi-partisan system of drawing boundaries which has been the envy of countries across the world; and is strongly of the opinion that the publication of such a Bill should have been preceded by a full process of pre-legislative scrutiny of a draft Bill.”

Alongside today’s announcement by Nick Clegg of a referendum on the Alternative Vote next year – a story first broken by this blog – the Deputy Prime Minister slipped out a u-turn on the controversial dissolution resolution. The change is a victory for Left Foot Forward, which aided by UCL’s Robert Hazell was the first progressive voice to recognise the distinction between a confidence vote and a dissolution resolution.

The initial coalition agreement announced:

“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.”

While a number of constitutional and political commentators erroneously confused the dissolution resolution with a confidence vote, Left Foot Forward asked:

“whether 55 per cent is too low a threshold for a dissolution resolution. If the point of a fixed term parliament is that the governing party cannot dissolve parliament to suit itself, perhaps the threshold should be two-thirds as in both the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly.”

In today’s Parliamentary statement, Nick Clegg said:

“there will be an additional power for parliament to vote for an early and immediate dissolution. We have decided that a majority of two thirds will be needed to carry the vote, as opposed to the 55% first suggested, as is the case in the Scottish Parliament. These changes will make it impossible for any government to force a dissolution for its own purposes.

“These proposals should make it absolutely clear to the House that votes of no confidence and votes for early dissolution are entirely separate.”

With one victory under the belt, the next battles must be to decouple the reduction in the number of MPs from the AV vote, and to ensure that fixed terms are four years, rather than five.

Our Guest writer is a disaffected Lib Dem voter, who writes under the pseudonym Akheloios

I am a Liberal Democrat, and have given them my vote since my first General Election in 1997. I hold no special love for New or Old Labour, though like many others I was filled with hope at the 1997 election when Tony Blair promised to usher in a new era of progressive, fair and ethical politics after nearly 20 years of soul-crushingly selfish Conservatism.

New Labour’s fall from grace – the war in Iraq, their deeply authoritarian and intolerant policies of recent years – crushed any hope that they’d be taking the lead in progressive change. I’d been very upset with the Labour changes to the benefits system in 2005 – constant retesting of those who had been tested again and again, driving people back to the dole having done everything the Government asked of them.

The Phil Woolas and ilk war on immigration was a disaster for solidarity. The right wing press war on the working class via their wedge strategy was working. Splitting working class ‘British’ and working class immigrants was knee jerk racist – and Labour fell for it hook line and sinker.

New Labour’s reliance on the city to produce taxation was a continuation of the Thatcherite service economy model which crushed manufacturing. Labour didn’t do nearly enough to create good jobs; in some regions families were trapped in poverty because they were on the third generation of unemployment due to the crippling of mining and manufacturing in the 80s.

The Liberal Democrats looked like the real progressive choice for the left. I voted Liberal Democrat for the change they promised. The rise of the tax allowance to £10,000 was a positive start, especially since they’d planned to pay for it with something that at least appeared progressive – the Mansion Tax.

This budget has made a lie of everything they appeared to stand for in the election. VAT of 20% will hit the poorest hardest. I’m more than a little bit of a fan of the Scandinavian system, where higher taxes for better services appears simple and effective. Where Sweden may have a VAT rate of 25%, at least they acknowledge it’s a regressive tax and make an allowance for it with a reduced rate of 12% on food.

I’m disabled and receive Disability Living Allowance, I have severe arthritis and suffer from Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. I had to jump through hoops, filling out form after form, and now I’m threatened with a medical test. It came as a complete surprise to me. While we’re going to have to wait to see the criteria, the change can only be there to reduce the numbers on DLA, and so I’m in danger of losing a large part of the benefits that allow me to cope with my disability.

Changing Child Allowance was always going to be tricky, removing it for middle and upper incomes might have meant it being completely abandoned for everyone in time – but a freeze? It attacks the lowest incomes and hardly touches the middle and upper income families at all.

A banking levy introduced and more than paid for by a reduction in Corporation Tax? We paid to save the banks from their own mistakes so that the entire system wouldn’t collapse, and now we’re giving them what turns out to be a tax break?

All the tax increases in this budget will affect the poorest first. It isn’t fair and it certainly isn’t progressive. CGT won’t have any real impact and there hasn’t been any increase on the top rate of income tax whatsoever. Those that can afford to pay a little more aren’t – those that can’t afford to pay are going to have to shoulder the entire burden.

This is a regressive budget – deficit reduction to appease the Tory voters and press, paid for in jobs and taxes, an attack on the on the poor and vulnerable. My father was on the picket lines in the 80’s as a Union rep, my family felt the pain of no income and the real fear of being a household without a primary wage earner. Now another era of mass redundancies has come again.

When the Liberal Democrats joined the coalition I didn’t know whether to feel disgusted because they’d joined the Tories, a party whose policies we’d fought against for so long, or whether I should feel happy because they’d mitigate the damage that the Tory party would do. Now I know that my initial feelings of disgust were correct, any mitigation has been small and completely swamped by the flood of policies attacking the poorest and most vulnerable. The gains we made in the coalition, the scrapping of the more extreme authoritarian Labour policies, were sold in exchange for this disastrous budget.

Progressive Politics is dying, and unless Charlie Kennedy and Diane Abbott can pull a very surprised rabbit from a hat, not a single party shows any inclination in making this country a fair and decent place to live.

Before the general election, the Labour party’s claims about Tory plans to cut child tax credits were dubbed “lies”. Labour was exonerated yesterday as the truth was revealed.

At his party conference speech last year, George Osborne said:

“we can no longer justify paying means tested tax credits to families with incomes over £50,000.”

Since then, the Conservative party has been consistent in claiming that “No families with a combined household income of £40,000 or less will be affected by our [tax credit] policy.”

George Osborne tried the trick again by claiming in his speech, “we will reduce payments to families earning over £40,000 next year and then align the thresholds for the child and family element.” But Table A2 in the Budget could not be clearer. By 2012-13, no family with one child over the age of one and income over £30,000 will get a penny in tax credits.

Earlier this year, a party election broadcast by the Labour party highlighted Conservative plans to “stop Child Tax Credit payments to hundreds of thousands of families on middle and modest incomes”. This followed a Labour briefing on February 3rd which claimed that:

“The independent Institute for Fiscal Studies has said that the Conservatives would need to take tax credits away from households with incomes of £31,000 to raise the money that the Conservatives have promised.”

A week later, then shadow work and pension secretary Theresa May, wrote an article on the Conservative party’s Blue Blog titled “Labour lies on child tax credits“:

Tax credits are designed to help families on low incomes, but we are now paying them to families earning over £50,000. We don’t think that is affordable anymore, so we have said that under a Conservative Government these families would stop receiving tax credits. No families with a combined household income of £40,000 or less will be affected by our policy.”

Who’s lying now, Theresa?

UPDATE 24/6:

It’s just worth being clear that this article – as per the note to the table above – refers only to those ineligible for baby, childcare, or disability tax credits.

Just nine months after Nick Clegg vowed to remove government special advisers’ salaries from the taxpayers burden, the Cabinet Office yesterday revealed that Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg is charging the taxpayer £165,000 for press spokeswoman Lena Pietsch and political adviser Richard Reeves.

In September 2009, Nick Clegg set out his money saving pledge in ‘A better politics for less‘:

“Special Advisors will not be paid for by the taxpayer”

“The government currently employs 74 Special Advisers in the central departments, an increase of more than 90% since 1995, at a cost to the taxpayer of £5.9m each year. These are political jobs, and should, therefore, be funded by political parties.”

At the time, the Liberal Democrats estimated that taxpayer savings would amount to some £5.9 million.

Any coalition would have required necessary compromises between the two parties, but a point of political principle such as not charging taxpayers for special advisers’ salaries was within the gift of the Liberal Democrats alone.

This could and should have been maintained even as the the Lib Dems went from opposition to government. The short term expediency of ditching a campaign pledge for the trappings of office is precisely the kind of matter that the Lib Dems would once have rightly hounded government ministers on.

Following this week’s meeting of the Joint Ministerial Committee, the leaders of the UK and devolved administrations declared that the gathering had discussed “the mutual respect agenda and how the four administrations could work together to make this a reality”. Despite such talk of respect, however, Nick Clegg’s call for a “New Politics” now seem a long time ago.

In leading for the Government in Monday’s Queen’s Speech debate on the Constitution and Home Affairs, the deputy prime minister announced that none of the minority parties from Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland would be represented on a new cross-party committee deigned to devise plans for reforming the House of Lords.

The decision not to include smaller parties will mean that there will be no representation from Northern Ireland, Scotland or Wales on a committee looking to reform parliament. Clegg’s announcement drew a string of criticism from across the opposition benches.

For Labour, former Welsh secretary and MP for Torfaen, Paul Murphy, made clear:

“I believe that the minority parties should be involved in discussions about the House of Lords.”

For the Democratic Unionist Party, MP for South Antrim, William McCrea, was disappointed at the decision, declaring:

“When I listened to the Deputy Prime Minister’s speech, I was very disappointed that he showed a lack of respect for the smaller parties in the House. I suggest to him that he should give minority parties more respect, because he could find himself on the Back Benches shortly. One should never allow power to go to one’s head.”

And for the Scottish National Party, its leader in Westminster, Angus Robertson, was equally critical:

“During the last Parliament, there was much I needed to criticise the Labour Government on when it came to constitutional matters, but in recent times the previous Government worked hard on issues such as the reform of party and MP finance to include all the parties.

“Indeed, the then Justice Secretary was exemplary in his relations with the political parties of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. It is totally unacceptable that we are to see major constitutional reforms in the United Kingdom on the basis of excluding the parties of government from Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.”

The Coalition Government’s failure to include representatives from outside England as it forms proposals to reform the United Kingdom House of Lords serves only to alienate those across Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland who feel aggrieved that Westminster views them as just an afterthought. If the Coalition is serious about its support for the union, its actions need to support its rhetoric.

Following Left Foot Forward’s report yesterday of David Cameron failing to make the Welsh Assembly Government aware of his policy on the date of a referendum for more law making powers for Cardiff, the voice of Wales in Government is now set to be silenced.

In publishing the list of cabinet committees, the Government has indicated that the Welsh Secretary will have membership of just one committee on home affairs, with no seat on the parliamentary business and legislation committee which in part has responsibility for approving Legislative Competency Orders (LCOs) granting extra legislative powers to the Welsh Assembly.

Writing on his Devolution Matters blog, constitutional expert from Edinburgh University, Alan Trench, warned:

“This raises issues… about Wales: what about framework powers, or timetabling LCOs?  The ability of Cheryl Gillan to affect this area looks limited by her exclusion here.”

Ms Gillian’s immediate predecessor, shadow Welsh secretary Peter Hain, said:

“I can’t quite believe that the new Welsh Secretary will only be sitting on one Cabinet committee. You have to wonder what she will be doing with her time.

“In virtually every big decision David Cameron has made since becoming Prime Minister, he has forgotten about Wales. Now he seems to have forgotten about his own Secretary of State. In contrast, Danny Alexander, her Scottish counterpart, will sit on eight committees.”

The developments come as more questions are raised about the Coalition’s understanding of Wales and the devolution settlement. Questioned on BBC Radio Wales about the Holtham Commission’s discovery that Wales lost out to the tune of £300 million under the Barnett Formula, Cabinet Office Minister, Francis Maude, said:

“Well that’s not a matter that was a key part of what that commission was looking at frankly. We are looking to have a referendum in Wales on further powers for the Assembly and that will be looked at in the course of this year.”

Mr Maude’s comments showed a staggering ignorance of the politics of Wales, since it was the All Wales Convention, chaired by Sir Emyr Jones Parry, that made recommendations on further powers, not the Holtham Commission about which the question was based.

Plaid Cymru finance spokesman, Chris Franks, concluded:

“This shows a staggering lack of understanding about the politics of Wales and unfortunately yet again highlights that Wales is nothing more than an afterthought to the London-based parties.”

And to add insult to injury, following a meeting with the electoral commission on the wording of a referendum on further law making powers for the Assembly, Welsh Secretary Cherly Gillan reported that:

“They also restated the mandatory obligation for a 10-week period of consultation on the Question.”

Her statement overlooks the fact that there is no mandatory obligation. Speaking to the Western Mail, Rhydian Thomas, deputy head of the Electoral Commission in Wales said:

“There is no mandatory obligation for there to be a 10-week consultation period, although we have expressed our view that such a period is desirable. But if we were asked to produce a report within a week, we would do so.”

Both David Cameron and Cheryl Gillan will be hoping their future dealings with Wales will prove more fruitful than their first few weeks in office. If not, David Cameron’s calls for respect between Wales and Westminster will prove hollow.

Our guest writer is Mary Thorogood (@marythorogood), Editor of Cameron’s Councils

The Tories boldly claim that Cameron’s Councils demonstrate their vision for national government. If their vision is realised on May 7, a ‘no-frills’, unfair and dogma-driven government may well be the order of the day. But what if we find ourselves in the largely unchartered waters of hung parliament territory this time next week? Where can we look for an indication of how the country could be governed?

Nationally, the Liberal Democrats pitch themselves as centre-left progressives but there are 18 councils where the Liberal Democrats have formed governing coalitions with the Tories. These include Leeds, Camden and Britain’s largest council, Birmingham. These councils provide a salutary warning for what could happen if a Lib-Con coalition takes place next week.

Birmingham Council is billions in debt and accused of financial mismanagement after the Labour Leader warned of a budget crisis last year. The ruling coalition is also accused of misusing the government’s Working Neighbourhood Fund money to plug a hole in the finances which they have since denied. And while the council struggle with their debt crisis, they are cutting scrutiny of their council and spending hundreds of thousands on balloons and pens. 

Tory/Lib Dem-run Leeds City Council has been demolishing successful learning centres and closing adult day care facilities – not unlike Cameron’s Councils. The council has also been accused of wasting money on consultants and mismanaging the Regeneration Department. Not quite the “fair, decent, transparent politics” that Mr Clegg has been calling for.

Nick Clegg says MPs should serve their constituents, not make a fast buck on the property market. But the Tory/Lib Dem Camden council is pursuing an aggressive policy of selling off council homes in the borough, allowing private property developers to make huge profits by ‘flipping’ or reselling them quickly onto the open market.

The smaller, but no less important, Tory/Lib Dem councils also tell a similar story to Cameron’s Councils – Carlisle has been slashing funding from community centres whilst Brent is closing community centres and hiking charges. 

There are obvious inconsistencies between what Clegg is telling the electorate nationally and what his local party is doing and even this varies from constituency to constituency. If the Lib Dems are to be taken seriously, they need to find a coherent vision at a local level.

Local – and national – government by coalition is rarely easy and compromises have to be made. But it seems that local Lib Dems are all too quick to ignore the supposedly progressive agenda of their national party to join the Tories in power. We may soon find out if their national colleagues will follow their lead.