The Liberal Party notes the announcement in the Queens Speech, 14th October 2019, that the government intends to enact legislation to force voters to provide photographic proof of their identify at polling stations.
 
Whilst the party acknowledges the serious issue of voting fraud, most cases of electoral fraud involve postal voting which would be unaffected by the provision of voter identification.
 
The demand for a recognised form of identification discriminates again those least able to secure documentation such as the elderly, foreign nationals legitimately entitled to vote and the youngest members of the electorate.
 
The Electoral Commission reported in December 2015 that about 3.5 million electors did not have an acceptable form of photo ID. A concern echoed by charities for the aged according to the Independent Newspaper (14th October).
 
The argument for voter Id risk’s being used as a backdoor to introducing national ID cards, a scheme which the Liberal Party has opposed on the grounds that it is an infringement to the right to privacy.
 
The party believes that alleged electoral fraud is best dealt with by local election services and the police, rather than putting the onus on the electorate to prove their identify at the polling station.

Dear Members,
 
The Liberal Party is currently seeking candidates, for both internal party NEC and Parliamentary Elections.
 
Internal Party
 
We are seeking candidates to serve on the Party's National Executive Committee, to ensure the party is run effectively and efficiently. We are also, seeking nominations for Party President, at the present time  only our current President Steve Radford has expressed a willingness to serve as Party President for the next two years. If you would like to support Steve, please send an email confirming you wish to nominate him, likewise if you know another member who is willing to stand, please nominate that member. We will do the necessary to confirm consent from any persons nominated. Please ensure your name and address are included on the nomination.
 
Parliamentary Candidates
 
We are still seeking members who are willing to stand in a constituency as Parliamentary candidates. If you are interested, please let us know. We have received generous donations which will allow us to fund a greater number of campaigns at the next general election, we will prioritise candidates who are willing to organise and campaign to get councillors elected to local council seats.

NEC nominations close Dec 1st.
 
Contacts
Stephen Graham.            Nomination Officer
Paul Bradshaw                     Membership Secretary

The General Data Protection Regulation ("GDPR") comes into force on the 25th May of 2018
 
The Liberal Party has responsibilities under these regulations as we have gathered personal details from members, supports and members of the public in the form of names, addresses, contact details and e-mail addresses.

This has special relevance as we collect address and contact details of Prospective Parliamentary candidates(PPC).
 
As such we have specific responsibility to ensure the information is kept securely, is not used for a purpose you have not given consent for, and is available for you to review and if requested to do so deleted responsibly.
  
If you have any questions or wish to exercises your rights please contact myself or another member of the Liberal Party NEC who will be happy to address your request.
 
Stephen Graham
NEC Member

The Liberal Party believes in controlled immigration as the only way to ensure the adequate planning of public services, a balanced employment market, use of resources and national security.

To this end we welcome the UK having control of our borders post Brexit. We were one of the first political parties to immediately call for protection for EU citizens working and living in the UK to remain here.

We would urge the UK government to broaden the access for EU citizens living and working in the UK registering for the right to continued residency.

We urge the government to clarify the rules on what qualifies as a serious crime to debar anyone staying for the avoidance of ambiguity and inconsistent policy application. We urge the UK government to develop immigration policies with a clear skills gap analysis rather than look purely at earning levels and wealth. We re-iterate our belief that a free movement with other commonwealth countries with a shared language, history and cultural ties.

We also believe that in any immigration policy we should see an obvious mutual advantage to give preference to Commonwealth countries who share English as a significant language and have established communities here.

The Liberal Party believes in controlled immigration as the only way to ensure the adequate planning of public services, a balanced employment market, use of resources and national security.

To this end we welcome the UK having control of our borders post Brexit. We were one of the first political parties to immediately call for protection for EU citizens working and living in the UK to remain here.

We urge the government to clarify the rules on what qualifies as a serious crime to debar anyone staying for the avoidance of ambiguity and inconsistent policy application. We urge the UK government to develop immigration policies with a clear skills gap analysis rather than look purely at earning levels and wealth. We re-iterate our belief that a free movement with other commonwealth countries with a shared language, history and cultural ties.

We also believe that in any immigration policy we should see an obvious mutual advantage to give preference to Commonwealth countries who share English as a significant language and have established communities here.

The Liberal Party notes with anguish the collapse of the Thomas Cook group leaving hundreds of thousands of customers awaiting repatriation from holiday destinations and thousands of staff made redundant.

After a span of 178 years the company had been forced into administration by a perfect storm of changing holiday booking habits, unsustainable debt, and an uncertain business outlook due to political instability in key holiday destinations and subdued domestic demand.

Although the party accepts the arguments for not extending a taxpayer funded bailout to prolong the company’s existence, serious question still needs to be asked about its failure.

We welcome the government scrutiny into the collapse and urge the government to ensure that holiday makers who travelled with Thomas Cooks are not in any way put under any extra stress or hardshipsdue to demands for money  and that  proper measures are put in place to protect any future holidaymakers should there be similar collapses of travel companies.

The sustainability of a traditional bricks and mortar business in the face of new technology should not translate into administration and closure.

Dear Editor

The Labour Party has taken a very alarming new turn on the question of education.

The state seeking to monopolise education is the first step taken by every authoritarian dictator across the world.
 
If private schools are abolished, what next, the right of parents to send children to faith schools abolished?

This policy actually shows Labour has given up on driving higher standards of educational achievement in state schools.

What is the immediate consequence of any such policy, without doubt parents and private schools and staff will exodus abroad and the money and skills lost to this country.

The diversity of private schools has often meant experiments in different forms and styles of education has been trialled and then extended to the state sector if successful.

It is dangerous path to go down and a clear expression Labour has become the party of state control with contempt for freedom of choice.

The Liberal Party acknowledges the benefit private education can provide to overall education standards, however, we are critical that financial bias is afforded to the private sector by charitable status and evasion of VAT.

Cllr  Steve Radford
President of The Liberal Party

I read with interest Council leader Jason Brock’s(Labour) comments on the Reading Chronicle website(30th June) concerning the increase in councillors allowances.
 
Councillors may be toiling late into the night for limited financial gain, but this is part and parcel of being an elected councillor.
 
Although there is a compelling argument to pay lead councillors a fulltime wage when they are managing a budget of almost 140 million pounds of taxpayer’s money, I imagine there is little public support for this.
 
A generous increase in allowances should come hand in hand with better management and scrutiny of councillor’s decisions and judgment such as building up a 70-million-pound commercial property liability under the guise of generating additional revenue from rentals.
 
The incumbent council has yet to publish the accounts for 2016/17 or 2017/18 and has given no indication if the 2018/19 will be delivered by the October deadline. This is despite spending up to half a million pounds on revisions and reworking.

The Liberal Party notes that a majority of Conservative party leadership contestants have admitted to historic casual drugs use, and as such we welcome their honesty and hope that this gives rise to public debate.
 
The party advocates replacing the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 and ancillary legislation with a replacement which provides for an effective strategy of legalisation, regulation and control.
 
We call for the establishment of an independent multi-agency co-ordinating body to oversee policy development and implementation in relation to the supply and control of drugs.
 
We support the taxation of drugs and redirection of criminal justice expenditure to education and treatment services and the dissemination of accurate and truthful information to minimise substance-related harm to individuals and communities.
 
Criminalisation of those afflicted with drugs dependency can have a detrimental impact, alienating people from contributing to society.
 
We believe that these measures will eliminate the criminal marketplace and cause a reduction in drugs related crime and violence whilst aiding those most in need of rehabilitation.

The Liberal Party believes that Britain needs a modern transport system that is as environmentally friendly as possible. We need to encourage people and freight away from our roads and planes.
 
We also recognise that our rail system still has bottle necks at key centres on what is still a network designed and built in the Victorian era.  
 
Therefore, we believe that a new properly designed rail network will in the long term prove to be economically and environmentally cost effective.
 
While we recognise that high speed lines built in other countries have proved popular and effective, we do have concerns that building what has become known as HS2 in its current guise may not justified by an analysis of the costs and benefits of the scheme.
 
Even the government’s own figures suggest that HS2 represents poor value for money compared with alternative investments in transport infrastructure.
 
Any new lines or complete network needs to have easy interchange with and be part of the national network not a separate entity.
 
Local authorities, transport bureaucracies and business groups are already lobbying central government to fund new infrastructure along the route, with several schemes already identified.
 
Designed correctly new infrastructure including new rail lines has the potential to boost the economy. Done badly it has the real possibility of triggering billions of pounds of additional expenditure on commercially loss-making, taxpayer-funded projects.
 
Along with design changes to ‘buy off’ wealthy opposition and subsidised regeneration projects, these proposals threaten to push total spending far beyond the basic budget.
 
The Liberal Party therefore believes that what has become known as HS2 network, should have an overall rethink.
 
The design process should consider good connections at key centres and that the overall timescale should ensure that where new lines are needed, they are not built as a rush job, but as a well thought out and viable addition to our transport system.
 
As such they would alleviate pinch points and bottle necks in our aging infrastructure and meet the needs of a modern environmentally aware Britain.