Lib Dem Leader and Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg has outlined a £1 billion pound Youth Contract to tackle youth unemployment. The aim is to ensure that all jobless young people are earning or learning again before long-term damage is done.
Over three years, the Youth Contract will provide at least 410,000 new work places for 18 to 24 year olds into work. Starting April 2012
Including 160,000 wage subsidies and 250,000 new work experience placements.
In addition, there will be at least 20,000 more incentive payments to encourage employers to take on young apprentices.
A new programme to help the most disengaged 16 and 17 year olds – getting them back to school or college, onto an apprenticeship or into a job with training.
Thousands of Liberal Democrats gathered for their annual conference in Birmingham this week. They discussed what has been achieved in the first 500 days of Government and policies for the future. Highlights include:
The Lib Dems are opposing calls for an immediate cut in the 50% tax rate paid by higher rate taxpayers.
Nick Clegg’s party instead wants to give more help to those on middle and low incomes who need it the most.
NIck Clegg: We need fairer taxes to help ordinary people, not tax cuts for the richest
Lib Dem Chief Secretary to the Treasury Danny Alexander said, “At a time when the whole country faces serious financial challenges, the priority needs to be people on low and middle incomes.”
A key part of the coalition agreement was the Lib Dem commitment to making taxes fairer. The Lib Dems are well on their way to delivering on their pledge that no one should pay tax on the first £10,000 they earn.
Nearly a million low paid workers are no longer paying income tax thanks to this. All basic rate tax payers are paying £200 less in income tax.
Each year more and more people on low and middle incomes will gain more thanks to the Lib Dem fairer tax plan.
Danny Alexander said, “Fairer taxes is our goal. I don’t see why, in the next parliament, we shouldn’t be trying to get to a situation where people in a full-time job on the minimum wage are paying no income tax at all.”
This would mean that no one would pay tax on the first £12,500 they earn.
The Lib Dems are continuing to work in Parliament to ensure NHS reforms deliver a better deal for patients.
Nick Clegg’s party won major changes to the reforms earlier this summer.
These included measures to ensure there will be no privatisation of the NHS and no special favours for the private sector.
Nick Clegg said, “With the Lib Dems, the NHS will always be free at the point of use and will deliver top quality treatment for patients. We want to deliver a better NHS that can cope with the increasing demand and rising health costs.”
The NHS reforms will cut waste and bureaucracy that costs billions of pounds. They will help the NHS cope with the costs of Britain’s steadily ageing population and the rising cost of many treatments.
By making the NHS more efficient and by protecting the NHS budget from cuts, more money can be spent on improving care for patients.
NHS faced disaster with Labour Had Labour won the last election, the NHS would have faced deep spending cuts. That along with Labour’s refusal to tackle waste and inefficiency would have been a disaster for our health services.
Labour rigged the market in favour of the private sector by giving contracts that were unfair for the taxpayer and for patients.
Over £250million of taxpayers’ money was handed over by the last Labour government to private providers for operations they didn’t even perform.
The Liberal Democrats have made sure that this kind of favouritism towards the private sector will now be illegal.
Funny old life isn’t it? In the local elections the Tories make great play of not attacking their opponents. Pity they can’t stick to the pledge when the elections are over. Whiff of hypocrisy springs to mind. Anyway having been the subject of a personal attack in the Mid Sussex Times I am detailing my response below:
Dear Sirs,
Making personal attacks on someone is not the best way of conducting a debate on Burgess Hill’s future.
I am sure New River knows its market, but let’s be clear about what that market is. Its focus is discount stores, value clothing, food retailers, and health and beauty (hairdressers and nail bars to you and me) (source: New River Annual Report). So for starters New River is not going to build a cinema because it does not fit its business model.
Furthermore, New River’s strategy includes selling property assets “opportunistically”. When it has achieved its business objectives, it will sell the Martlets Shopping estate (source: New River Annual Report). In the process it will pay no tax on its rental income and no capital gains tax on its property disposals. Yes, one day it will pack its bags and leave anyway.
Hard commercial reality could mean that our aspirations for arts and culture in Burgess Hill may fall short of our expectations because New River’s directors will look to its shareholder interests first. I do not blame them for that but let’s be clear that their best deal may not be the town’s best deal. My focus is on the best deal for the town.
As someone who devotes considerable time and energy in promoting cultural events in the town I am absolutely committed to the cause of having an arts centre that is fit for the twenty first century and is a step on from The Martlets (good friend that it has been to me over the years). At present this is not on offer from New River and we must not let this aspiration slip. I am sure Burgess Hill Town Council will share that concern with me.
So when I see that there may be another superstore built on the Cyprus Road Car Park site it puzzles me as it makes no economic or strategic sense whatsoever to have a major food retailer on the Martlets shopping centre and also on the Cyprus Road Car Park. So my argument is that if the Cyprus Road Car Park was designated as the town’s arts and culture quarter you would have a home for a new modern arts centre, a library and, you would also keep The Orion Cinema open.
I passionately believe that Burgess Hill can be a real regional centre for the arts but we must provide the space and the facilities to make that happen. If New River wants to leave a legacy before it moves on then it should come up with the funding for it.
The proposals announced by New River Retail for redevelopment of our retail centre in Burgess Hill leaves a gaping hole for those of us who are concerned about the towns cultural and artistic development.
The Burgess Hill Masterplan, which was produced in 2006, had specific pledges about the need for a new arts centre and the need for a cinema in Burgess Hill. Yet all New River Retail seem to be offering is a “revamped” Martlets and the cinema is not mentioned at all. So far from being excited by the proposals I feel distinctly underwhelmed by them and the need to fill the cultural gap in New River Retail’s plans has to be urgently addressed. Mid Sussex District must not sideline the arts for the sake of some shops. My concern is that if we are not careful the need for a thriving arts and cultural centre in Burgess Hill will be downgraded.
We need to curb the desire to build a supermarket on every piece of development land in the centre of Burgess Hill. I now know that Sainsbury has already begun to buy up properties in Cyprus Road. This is presumably as prelude to its application for a supermarket on the car park site. Now New River Retail Limited want to build a supermarket in the vicinity of the Martlets Car Park and Waitrose wants to expand by 50%. Given that we also have Tesco, LIDL and Iceland this approach just doesn’t make sense.
Where then will the arts centre and cinema be if all this building goes ahead? We must have space for a new arts centre and cinema in Burgess Hill must be allowed to continue. Current proposals, despite the pledges in the Burgess Hill Masterplan provide for neither of these and Burgess Hill runs the risk of being sold short by Mid Sussex District Council.
But MSDC has it in its power to solve this problem. If it allocates the Cyprus Road Car Park land as the site of a new arts centre and library rather than selling the land for a “quick buck” to Sainsbury we could create a cultural quarter in Burgess Hill. This would include the cinema as part of that cultural quarter and intelligent designing could turn the area into a real meeting place for people. This proposal would chime well with the people who have been backing the Save The Orion Cinema facebook campaign and those who have signed the online petition. There are nearly 2700 fans on facebook and 750 have signed the online petition. Let’s hope MSDC gets the message.
Lib Dem MP Simon Hughes has led a review of access to higher education. He spent six months traveling around the country to speak with thousands of young people about the changes to university financing and all other concerns they have about access to higher education
Last week he published his final report. It contains over 30 recommendations directed towards schools and colleges, universities, government and regulators on what they can do to encourage participation in higher education. You can download a copy of the report from the Cabinet Office website here: Hughes Report
Leader of the Lib Dems Nick Clegg talks to fellow Lib Dem MP Julian Huppert about the issues raised by the phone hacking scandal.
The phone hacking scandal has uncovered a crisis that strikes at the heart of our democracy, calling into question our trust in the institutions and individuals tasked with protecting our freedom and enforcing the rule of law.
Liberal Democrats have for more than a decade challenged the dominance of News International, with successive Parliamentarians raising the issue, from Paddy Ashdown in 1998 to Chris Huhne just before the General Election. We have time and again battled both the Conservatives and Labour to push for stronger laws on media plurality seeking to prevent the concentration of power in the hands of a few media moguls.
It is vital that we now build on the select committee hearings and cast a greater spotlight on what was clearly a murky relationship between the press, police and indeed politics. That is why the Liberal Democrats have made sure the inquiry is Judge-led and has the power to summon witnesses to give evidence under oath and sits in public.
Local Lib Dem campaigners have welcomed news that the UK Payments Council has reversed its decision to scrap cheques.
The campaign to save the cheque was led by Lib Dem MPs and was backed by thousands of people across the UK.
We want to say a huge thank you to all the local people who signed the Lib Dem petition to save the cheque.
” Being able to pay by cheque is especially important for our small businesses, community groups and older people here in the area.
Cheques remain a popular way to pay for millions of people across the UK. Over a billion transactions were made by cheque last year alone.
“This is a great victory for people power and common sense, and proves that the banks cannot afford to ignore the views of their customers.”
