Phil Willis opens new Lib Dem campaign headquarters in Harrogate

Proving there's Lib Dem life beyond the blue wall, The Stray Ferret reports the opening of our new campaign headquarters in Harrogate:

The constituency's former Lib Dem MP, Phil Willis, cut the ribbon on the premises on Westmoreland Street, flanked by party volunteers and accompanied by Tom Gordon, who will be challenging Conservative candidate Andrew Jones for the seat.

Mr Willis – who now sits in the House of Lords as Baron Willis of Knaresborough – won Harrogate and Knaresborough in 1997 and was re-elected with increased majorities in 2001 and 2005 before stepping down in 2010. 

Phil told the independent local news site:

The last time I did this was in 1997 and look what happened then. I believe when we look back, this will be seen as an important day for the Lib Dems and for Harrogate and Knaresborough.

Tom Gordon added:

Already we’ve had countless people walking in to collect posters and offering to volunteer, it’s clear we are building momentum and local people see us as the key challengers and alternatives to the Conservatives here in Harrogate and Knaresborough.

Lib Dems name candidate for North of England target

Harrogate and Knaresborough Liberal Democrats have chosen Tom Gordon as their candidate to fight the seat at the next general election.

As I blogged recently, the selection began last summer but was restarted after Harrogate and Knaresborough was named as a Lib Dem target seat.

It's good to see the party targeting seats outside the South of England. As the latest Lib Dem Podcast says, we  can't just be a party of the South of England.

Phil Willis, who was Lib Dem MP for the seat between 1997 and 2010, told The Stray Ferret:

"Tom would make a fantastic Member of Parliament for Harrogate and Knaresborough. I have seen first hand how passionate he is about delivering change for local people across the region and know he will be a strong voice standing up for the constituency.

"Across the country, people are turning to the Liberal Democrats to oust out of touch Conservative MPs. People are fed up with being taken for granted by the Conservative party and I’ve heard this loud and clear from people across Harrogate and Knaresborough."

Lord Bonkers' Diary: For the Fallen

And so another week with Rutland's most popular fictional peer draws to a close.

Sunday

After every general election, it behoves us to remember those among our colleagues who fell in action: we say a prayer for them at St Asquith's this morning. In the ensuing silence - and before the enthusiastic rendering of 'The Last Post' by a member of the Rutland Army Cadet Force - I think of Richard Younger-Ross and Julia Goldsworthy, victims both of unfortunate misunderstandings over household furnishings, of Paul Rowen in Rochdale and of Sandra Gidley in Romsey.

Some of our chaps, of course, stood down of their own volition. Notable amongst them was that scourge of the “two-tier service”, Phil Willis. Willis, you may recall, had been a headmaster before entering Parliament and, when asked what he most regretted in life, was wont to reply that it was using the cane in that earlier career. This always won applause from the audience, but it struck me as trying to have your cake and eat it.

Earlier this week

Monday: Minister for Outer Space
Tuesday: Coalition in the balance
Wednesday: David Laws in his pomp
Thursday: Send for Harpo Miliband
Friday: A day on the Estate
Saturday: Avoiding George IV

Lord Bonkers' Diary: A two-tier service?

The latest dispatch from the nation's most celebrated fictional peer. Lord Bonkers was Liberal MP for Rutland South West, 1906-10.

Saturday

Do you remember Phil Willis’s delightful daughter? She was the young lady in the advertisement who had the internet projected on to her white dress. I thought that was a splendid idea and am sorry that it subsequently lost ground to the flat plasma screen.

Anyway, I learn today that Willis is in the soup for claiming for a flat where the young lady lived. I fear he is the author of his own misfortune as I put a perfectly serviceable solution to him some years ago. “Willis,” I said, “why don’t you get bunk beds? That way, your daughter can sleep in the lower bunk when she is there alone but move to the upper bunk when you are in Westminster on parliamentary business.”

Willis replied rather sniffily that it would be wrong to offer his daughter a two-tier service.

Previously on Lord Bonkers' Diary

Monday: Sense on MPs' expenses
Tuesday: David Boyle - a star is born

Wednesday: The Corby trouser press
Thursday: The inkwells of Rutland

Friday: Rutland's nuclear deterrent

Phil Willis and whistleblowing on higher education standards

Last November I questioned Phil Willis's approach, as chairman of the Commons innovation, universities, science and skills select committee, to its inquiry into claims that standards in higher education are falling. He called on critics of government policy to "put up or shut up" and challenged them "to come out from the woodwork".

A report in the Times Higher Education supplement suggests that he should have been more concerned for the welfare of the witnesses he called:

An academic at loggerheads with Manchester Metropolitan University after he blew the whistle on alleged grade inflation at the institution has claimed that he was scapegoated by being kicked off its academic board.
Walter Cairns was ejected from the board following a vote of no-confidence instigated by John Brooks, vice-chancellor of Manchester Met.
The move was made in the aftermath of Mr Cairns' submission to the Innovation, Universities, Science and Skills Select Committee inquiry into higher education standards. It concerned a course he taught in which marks were bumped up across the board following an 85 per cent failure rate.
Mr Cairns told the panel of MPs that the changes had been made without his consent and despite an initial indication from the external examiner that his marking was appropriate.

As I said in November, it was hard to see why Phil was being so bullish in favour of Labour government policy. I asked:

Surely the role of a select committee chairman is to be impartial and to put those giving evidence at their ease?

It seems that Laurie Taylor's satirical column about the University of Poppleton. which also runs in the Times Higher Ed, was pretty much on the money:

Dumbing down
Janet Fluellen, our Director of Curriculum Development, has enthusiastically welcomed the news that a cross-party panel of MPs has asked academics to submit evidence of dumbing down in universities.
"We are so committed to this exercise," she told The Poppletonian, "that we have constituted a high-powered dumbing-down committee (myself and the vice-chancellor). Any Poppleton academic with evidence of slipping or falling standards should submit their claim to this committee together with their name, age, departmental affiliation, number of years in service, a recent passport-size photograph, a P45 and a small DNA sample."

So much for a liberal education

From politics.co.uk:

At a press conference on Tuesday committee chairman Phil Willis condemned students for being too naive about their prospects. He called on them to choose subjects based on the demands of business, not their own interests.

The committee referred to is the Commons select committee on innovation, universities, science and skills.

Dumbing down in British universities

Yesterday I questioned Phil Willis's attitude towards those who suggest there may have been some dumbing down of standards in universities.

Laurie Taylor's satirical column about the University of Poppleton, written for the Times Higher Education Supplement, is a lot nearer the mark:

Dumbing down

Janet Fluellen, our Director of Curriculum Development, has enthusiastically welcomed the news that a cross-party panel of MPs has asked academics to submit evidence of dumbing down in universities.

"We are so committed to this exercise," she told The Poppletonian, "that we have constituted a high-powered dumbing-down committee (myself and the vice-chancellor). Any Poppleton academic with evidence of slipping or falling standards should submit their claim to this committee together with their name, age, departmental affiliation, number of years in service, a recent passport-size photograph, a P45 and a small DNA sample."

Phil Willis attacks critics of Labour university policy

Imagine an inquiry into an aspect of government policy. Would you have any confidence in that inquiry if its chairman called on critics of the policy to "put up or shut up" and challenged them "to come out from the woodwork"?

You would have very little confidence at all. You would probably conclude that the chairman was a Labour hack. You might even worry about what was going on in the darker recesses of his mind. Rats and cockroaches live in the woodwork, don't they?

Except that the person speaking in Phil Willis, Lib Dem MP for Harrogate and Knaresborough and the chairman of the Commons innovation, universities, science and skills select committee.

Yet the Times Higher Education Supplement, which reports Willis's remarks, recently ran a survey on the subject and found:

Of the 500 readers who took part in the survey, nine out of ten participants said resourcing constraints were having an adverse effect on academic standards, and seven out of ten said the rise in the number of top degree classifications did not indicate an improvement in standards.

So it is hard to see why Willis is being so bullish in favour of government policy. No doubt some people do oppose wider access to university education for unworthy reasons, but there is enough evidence - if only anecdotal - to justify a fair-minded inquiry. Surely the role of a select committee chairman is to be impartial and to put those giving evidence at their ease?

But then Willis has always had a side to his politics that is more Labour than many Labour supporters. His was the dominant Lib Dem voice on education for several years after 1997, and because of that we ended up opposing all parental choice in secondary school admissions. I doubt that any Liberal Democrat candidate anywhere campaigned on that policy.

Ming Campbell: Contrasting views from the regional press

Two columnists have taken markedly different views today of the future of Sir Menzies Campbell's leadership of the Liberal Democrats.

Writing in the East Anglian Daily Times, Graham Dines says:

With no election in prospect for at least 18 months, will Lib Dem MPs put pressure or Sir Ming to stand down? Since he took over, the party at best has been treading water and at worse appearing to be directionless.

But while Sir Ming's speech in Brighton to his party's conference did not galvanise the voters, the Lib Dems would be - to borrow a phrase from the late Lord Hailsham - “stark raving bonkers”­ to replace him ...

It seems, however, that the whisperers in the parliamentary party are still putting it about that Sir Ming - who will be in Mildenhall tomorrow to address the Lib Dems' eastern region conference - is not up to the job.

“It is pathetic,” senior backbencher Mike Hancock said in a radio interview this week. “The people who have persistently done it are some of the people who shouted loudest to get Ming into the job.

“It is a shower of people who haven't got the backbone or the balls to come out to say it to his face and to the party. The one thing that Ming has shown over the last six months is that he is not prepared to take this perpetual backbiting and snidey remarks behind his back.”

Someone throw a bucket of cold water over Mr Hancock, please.

Meanwhile, in the Yorkshire Post, Adam Davison takes a very different view. Billed as "a political analyst and former Parliamentary assistant to Harrogate MP Phil Willis," he writes:

Sir Ming will be under no illusions about the difficulties that could lie ahead if he chose to stay on, especially when you consider that he will be nearing 70 at the next election.

So he must demonstrate his own ability to take the hard decisions that matter by showing maturity and a humbleness which is non-existent in our other leaders, announce his resignation and then play his part in a much-needed reinvigorating leadership campaign.

I would not expect Ming to take this decision lightly, but there is no doubt that he must make it quickly. We have seen in the last couple of months how dragging one's heels can be damaging and the party needs acts of strong leadership, first in an act of great humility; secondly, in the announcement of key figures, such as Sheffield Hallam MP Nick Clegg, their intentions to stand, and most importantly, through the setting out of a strong vision for a liberal Britain.

The leadership election must be a campaign of ideas setting out how each contender would seek to take the party forward through strategy and policy and finally start to address the question of what place the Liberal Democrats have in modern British politics.

Sir Ming has failed to be the king he hoped he could be, but his role as kingmaker could yet be his defining moment in the history of Liberalism.

Phil Willis stands down in Harrogate

Liberal Democrat Voice reports that Phil Willis is to stand down at the next general election. At the last election Phil had a majority of 10,429, though there will be boundary changes next time.

As part of our service to aspiring Lib Dem parliamentarians, we offer a link to the Harrogate tourism people and a photograph of this attractive town.

Lord Bonkers adds: You will often find me in Betty's.

Is choice really an illusion?

The Guardian has a full report of Tony Blair's appearance before the Commons liaison committee this morning.

I was particularly struck by the following:

Second subject, and Lib Dem Phil Willis, the chair of the science and technology committee, leading the questioning.

What evidence is there that patient choice in health drives up quality? he wants to know.

Mr Blair points to reduced waiting lists. No, you're going off on a tangent, says Mr Willis. What about quality, not waiting times?

The prime minister says that in 1997 the key issue was waiting times; a few months rather than a few years for cataract operations is an improvement in health care.

But how meaningful is choice if the hospital you attend is not chosen by the patient or even the GP, but faceless bureaucrats at the primary care trust?

Choice is an illusion, says the Harrogate MP. I don't agree, says Mr Blair; payment by results will mean that money follows the patient.

Granted, it is the job of members of this committee (who are the chairs of other select committees) to ask awkward questions. Granted, it is the job of members of opposition parties to oppose.

But Phil Willis here seems not just to be pointing out all the practical problems in implementing the government's choice agenda. He seems to be questioning the very concept of choice itself. And that seems to me an odd thing for a Liberal to be doing.

I stand by what I wrote on the Guardian politics pages in April last year:

If liberalism is to amount to something more than socialism without the identity cards, respect for individual difference must be central to it.

Perhaps there are ways of respecting individual differences that do not involve giving people more choice. But opponents of choice do not talk about them. Too often - in the Liberal Democrats and beyond - they sound like the voice of public sector professionals and almost contemptuous of the views and interests of the wider public.

The taxation debate

As every other Lib Dem blogger has already reported, the amendments proposed to the taxation motion were all lost. In particular, Evan Harris's attempt to retain the 50p higher rate was defeated.

Given that the two sides agreed on so much, it is hard to see how this ever blew up into the great row that it was widely presented as being. Even so, there are a couple of lessons we should learn from the affair.

The first is that Ming's advisers should refrain from David Steel's old tactic of briefing the press that a particular vote is a test of the leader's authority and credibility, and then using the resulting threat of bad publicity as a way of bullying people into voting the way they want. If they are not confident of winning over a hall full of Liberal Democrat activists then it is hard to see what chance they have of convincing the voters.

The second is that those who dissent from the current direction of party policy need to do some serious thinking. It isn't enough to accept what is proposed and then add something like a 50p tax rate on top of it, like a cherry on a cake someone else has baked. They need to come up with something more substantial themselves.

Incidentally, Phil Willis seemed to think that the Liberal Democrats should stand for more and more public spending for ever and ever. Given that I am becoming increasingly sceptical of the extent to which much public spending helps the poor, I am less convinced of his case than I used to be.

It would be nice if the radicals were more, er, radical.

Experts talk out of their 4Rs

I find it hard to be enthusiastic about the announcement of the Liberal Democrats' 4Rs Commission.

The party website says: "We've asked some independent thinkers, not previously associated with the Lib Dems, to do some big thinking for us on primary education."

And who are those thinkers? The website says:

Dr Bethan Marshall (chair): literacy expert from Kings College

Dr Mike Askew: numeracy expert from Kings College

Floella Benjamin: TV presenter and long time worker for children and education charities

Dr John Howson: visiting professor at Oxford Brookes and expert in teacher recruitment

Cllr James Kempton: Leader of Islington Council and LGA spokesperson on Young People

A primary school teacher TBC

First a small point. If you are going to appoint people from King's College to serve on an education commission, it is a good idea to include the apostrophe in that institution's name (it is the University of London King's) when you list them. Otherwise you risk looking rather silly.

More seriously, we are told that these people are "not previously associated with the Lib Dems" - James Kempton apart, I assume it means. Does this mean they are not party members? Does it mean they are not Lib Dem sympathisers? Does it mean they are not Liberals at all? If they are not, why are we inviting them to write our policy for us? Why do we think we shall like what they have to say?

What I suspect lies behind this move is a feeling that politics and ideology are bad things and that we should lead such matters to the experts.

The problems with that view are many.

One important one is that if we talk to the experts and other parties talk to similar experts, then we shall all end up saying much the same thing. Already this statement has quite a New Labour feel to it.

Another problem is that the education establishment in Britain is uniformly Labourist - in favour of centralisation, uniformity and all the things Liberals are meant to be against. If we consult that establishment we shall merely hear Labour views coming back at us, and unless we are strong-minded, those are the views we shall adopt as a result. Ever since Phil Willis became Lib Dem education spokesman, we have largely subcontracted out education policy to the teaching unions and the results have not been inspiring.

Finally, this worship of expert views ignores that many political questions are not technical ones but moral ones - questions what we see as the good life and about the sort of society we want to live in. No expert can give you the answers to these questions. The answers we choose should rest upon the values we hold in common as Liberal Democrats.

Already the commission is being pointed towards some very odd policies for a Liberal party. The fourth R, apparently, is "aRticulation" (geddit?!) and the website says:

Too many children aren't arriving at school with the vocabulary and the ability to speak in sentences that allows them to pick up where the government's literacy strategy begins - we're missing a step. Giving young children the language skills they need to express themselves helps them learn, improves behaviour and imbues them with confidence.

So we need intervention in the home before children start school to make sure they are able to benefit from the government's literacy strategy? It sounds as though the Lib Dems are seeking to appeal to people who think that New Labour are a bunch of libertarians.

Such views will make us very popular with the education establishment, but I am not convinced that the wider electorate will think so much of it. Imagine writing a Focus telling people they don't know how to teach their children to speak.

That's the great thing about politics: it's far too important to be left to the experts.

Jodie Marsh slams Phil Willis

Recess Monkey reports an extraordinary attack on Phil Willis by Jodie Marsh.

Phil Willis is a topless model and former Page 3 girl; Jodie Marsh is Lib Dem MP for Harrogate. (Are you sure about this? Ed.)

This year’s educational panacea

Today's House Points column from Liberal Democrat News. Although it covers the teaching of reading I managed to avoid mentioning Ladybird Books, but it can only be a matter of time before Lassie appears.

Later note: As the blogosphere has higher ethical standards than print journalism, I should thank Tim Hicks and Tim Worstall for postings that helped inspire this column.

Home Counties voice: Come on Tim!


Not so phonic

The Tories have decided what it is they object to most about Tony Blair’s government. There’s not enough micromanagement. The trouble with New Labour, they believe, is that it does not centralise things enough.

You don’t believe me? Look at the way they’ve taken up this year’s educational panacea: synthetic phonics. Here is Tim Collins (whatever happened to him?) during the election campaign: “We won’t waste time commissioning more reports and pilot projects – the evidence is there and we will act upon it.”

Now Nick Gibb is inveighing against “the education establishment, who have known about this research for some time, have not adapted the national literacy strategy to put synthetic phonics at its core."

Yes, something about phonics appeals to the Tory mind. The Daily Mail thinks “Phonics is taught through discipline and repetition.” Which fits with its belief that education is impossible without “discipline, authority, order, tradition, learning by heart, rigorous examinations, selection”. (If space had permitted it would undoubtedly have added cold showers and swishy canes to the list.)

Maybe synthetic phonics is a better way of teaching reading, even though many of those pushing it have a commercial interest in doing so. And it has its unattractive side. There are stories of children being denied books and its proponents are no keener on illustrations than your average Puritan clergymen was.

But if synthetic phonics is best, how have we found that out? Will someone help Collins please? Thank you, Widdecombe. It’s because of an experiment. And how will we make the next breakthrough in teaching reading if the government imposes synthetic phonics everywhere and allow no more experiments? No, Gibb, I don’t know either.

Excuse me for coming over all headmasterly. Think of it as a tribute to Phil Willis. During the election campaign he said: “We need to free teachers from endless central government diktats, testing and targets and allow them to practise the methods that are best for their pupils.”

He was right, but we need to go further. A maintained education sector with a wider variety of providers and more freedom to choose between them would not be kind to schools which didn’t teach children to read. And the best methods, be they synthetic phonics or anything else, would flourish.

Is choice off the agenda?

During the Liberal Democrat Conference in Bournemouth this year Phil Willis, our "jolly education spokesman", told the BBC:

When you look at schools and the whole area of choice, it's amazing how quickly choice moved off the agenda. It was exposed as hypocritical.

Today's Manchester Evening News reports that:

A top Catholic college is to change its admissions policy after hundreds of parents camped through the night in the hope of putting their children's names down for places.

Perhaps a little more thought is needed on this one?

Save our children from politicians

Tony Blair said today (click here for the full speech):

I want an end to latch key kids as we move from the traditional welfare state to an opportunity society that helps families with the daily problems they face. I can announce today that over the next Parliament, every parent with children in primary school will be offered the guarantee of affordable school based childcare from 8 to 6, from breakfast clubs in the morning to after school clubs in the evening - and not just during term time but all the year round.

Leaving aside the meaningless, prefabricated phrases ("an-opportunity-society-that-helps-families-with-the-daily-problems-they-face"), the interesting thing here is that Mr Blair's offer sounds like of one those you can't refuse. He talks about offering a guarantee of out-of-hours care in school, but his ambition of "an end to latch key kids" will come about only if every parent takes up that offer. It is hard to see that happening without some element of compulsion.

What happened to the idea that parents are the best judges of whether their children are old enough to be left alone for a time or the idea that children might enjoy and benefit from exercising a degree of independence? We live in a society where the parent-child relationship is increasingly seen as problematic while the state-child relationship - mediated through professionals - is seen as uncomplicated and benign.

Meanwhile for the Liberal Democrats:

Education spokesman Phil Willis said the government's plans for "dawn 'til dusk childcare" was an "empty promise" until key details like how the plans would impact on teachers' pay were set out.

Yes, these details will have to be sorted out. But is teachers' pay really the thing we should be talking about on the day that childcare come to the top of the political agenda? The Lib Dems do sometimes give the impression that they are more concerned with the interests of teachers than those of children and parents.