Tom Brake is the new director of Unlock Democracy

Tom Brake, who was Liberal Democrat MP for Carshalton and Wallington in London between 1997 and 2019, was named today as the new democracy of Unlock Democracy.

This pressure group declares on its website:

We want a democratic society that centres equality and justice for all, and a political system that reflects and upholds the values we collectively share.

We want our democratic society protected by a new and codified constitution that is built and owned by the people.

Six of the Best 944

"The substantive way to improve lives of working class people is through making their work better-paid and more secure, and to reduce the cost of life’s essentials, such as housing. There is at last some sign that both Conservative and Labour politicians are starting to recognise it (I wish I could say the same for my own Liberal Democrats, who have become something of a middle-class ghetto – though not irretrievably)." Matthew Green says we need to talk about class.

Tom Brake goes back to Russia: "Returning to Moscow last year, over forty years later, jeans were available in all sizes and price ranges, chewing gum could be purchased in every flavour imaginable and the supermarkets were bulging with produce flown in from around the world. What had not altered one iota was the lack of democracy and the Kremlin’s confrontational approach to the West generally, and the UK in particular."

The abuses in Leicester's fast fashion factories were known for years before Covid-19 highlighted them. So why, asks Sam Bright, was nothing done?

If you read the news regularly, you may have noticed that a lot of women die in ‘isolated incidents’. Debbie Cameron argues that they are not isolated at all.

Andy Mitchell uncovers the history of a black athlete in Scotland in the 1870s.

"Paintings in sound, his Four Sea Interludes from Peter Grimes are infused not only with the Suffolk seascape but also with the sounds of birds, the redshanks and the reed warblers that Britten would have heard on the daily 'composing walks' he took after lunch to reflect on his morning’s work." Marci Meth on Benjamin Britten's debt to the natural world.

Lib Dems in Bollocked by Bercow club

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The House magazine reprints an extract from Sebastian Whale's new biography of the former Commons speaker John Bercow.

This section will be of particular interest to Liberal Democrat readers:

During the coalition years, some Lib Dems did feel that Bercow should have allowed them more opportunity to express their own independent voice when it diverged with that of the Conservatives.

“I felt there could have been more accommodation to allow that to help us increase the profile of the Lib Dems as opposed to the coalition,” says Tom Brake. 

After the 2015 election, when the Lib Dems were left with just eight MPs, some felt that Bercow was not playing fair. 

“He treated the Liberal Democrats poorly in the 2015–17 parliament,” says former Lib Dem MP Greg Mulholland. “Not because they had lost their third-party status, which we had, but by not giving the same parity and time to the leader and MPs that had been afforded to previous smaller parties.”

The runners and riders in the Lib Dem leadership election

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MoneyWeek has an article about the betting market on the forthcoming Liberal Democrat leadership election.

Ladbrokes are offering the following odds:

Jo Swinson              Evens
Layla Moran             11/8
Ed Davey                   8/1
Tom Brake                20/1
Norman Lamb          33/1
Alistair Carmichael   50/1
Jamie Stone             50/1
Tim Farron              100/1

The author, Dr Matthew Partridge, suggests that Layla Moran represents the value bet - particularly at the slightly more generous odds being offered by Betfair

Rushcliffe Lib Dems invite you to supper with Tom Brake

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On Thursday 7 February  Rushcliffe Lib Dems are holding a supper event with Tom Brake MP, the party's spokesperson for Brexit and international trade.

It is being held at the Larwood and Voce Pub and Kitchen, in the shadow of the Trent Bridge cricket ground in West Bridgford.

As well as the chance to hear from Tom on the latest Brexit developments, the organisers promise you lively conversation and the chance to network with fellow Lib Dem members from across the East Midlands "in a relaxed and exclusive venue".

Book via the East Midlands Lib Dems website.

Tom Brake chides Geoffrey Cox for his descent into Vaudeville

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Tom Brake, a former deputy leader of the House, began his speech in this afternoon's contempt debate as follows:

May I start by praising the Attorney General for spending more than two hours answering questions, but may I also gently chide him for the manner in which, occasionally, his style of delivery descended rather into Vaudeville? Finger-pointing, faux bonhomie and expansive arm gestures may work in court, but perhaps he might like to leave those at the Bar of the House.

If that sort of thing works in court, it does not increase your confidence in the legal system.

Nottingham panel discussion on "Brexit - What Next?"

The European Movement is holding  a free 'Question Time' event in Nottingham city centre on the evening of 28 September.

On the panel will be:

Ken Clarke MP
Anna Soubry MP
Chris Leslie MP
Tom Brake MP
Femi Oluwole - Our Future Our Choice
Eloise Todd - Best for Britain

The moderator will be John Hess, the former BBC East Midlands political editor.

You can apply for tickets via the European Movement Leicestershire site.

The event will take place at the Nottingham Conference Centre, 30 Burton Street, Nottingham NG1 4BU (6.30-9.30pm).

Kenneth Clarke and Tom Brake to speak on Europe in Spalding

Kenneth Clarke and Tom Brake will be two of the panel at a meeting on Europe to be held at the South Holland Centre, Spalding, on Friday evening (7.00pm, 25 May).

It is organised by the European Movement under the title "The Brexit Dialogue: Explaining the Facts, Exposing the Myths, Exploring the Options."

The other speakers will be Amelia Womack, deputy leader of the Green Party, and James Torrance, one of the founders of the new party Renew. (Me neither.)

It will be chaired by that excellent Liberal Democrat George Smid, who chairs the European Movement in the East Midlands.

For free tickets, says Spalding Today, go to the South Holland Centre booking office or phone 01775 764777.

Or you can reserve tickets for a small charge on the South Holland Centre website.

Liberal Democrat attitudes to existing grammar schools

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The Liberal Democrat manifesto was in no doubt:

The Conservatives want to take us back 50 years, to an outdated system of grammar schools and secondary moderns, ignoring all the research and expert advice that show it will damage the life chances of so many children.

And Tim Farron was certainly in no doubt after the election result was known:

"Even a modest extension of grammar schools is still unacceptable. It is a betrayal of the principle of comprehensive education. It needs to be thrown out of the window. 

"This election delivered a message to the Conservatives, people do not want to go in this direction. Theresa May needs to axe her plan for grammar schools like its architect Nick Timothy has been axed. 

And he added: "People want a country that is fairer not the rose tinted spectacles of the 1950s."

Both quotes, it is true, are about the Conservatives' plans to open new grammar schools. But if the evidence is so clear, and if feelings are running so high, you would expect Lib Dems to campaign locally to close the existing grammar schools where they still exist.

I once asked if this happens, but received no clear answer,

A clue to the position on the ground came in a New Statesman article about Tom Brake's campaign to hold on to his Carshalton and Wallington seat:

From there, it was north through the heart of Wallington, formerly part of Surrey, where three of Sutton’s five grammar schools are found. 

“Sutton is very popular because of the grammar schools,” Brake says. “Parents often make a point of moving to Sutton to access them. The downside is they are selective in their nature. It means that unless a child does well – not just well, but really well – in the 11-plus exam or the equivalent, then the fact that you live in Sutton is no guarantee that your child will get a place there. They are very high performing, there’s no doubt about that.” 

Theresa May has paved the way for more grammar schools to be set up. Is Brake pro or anti-grammar? 

“Well, I think provision of schools is something that should be locally decided,” he says. “Our party position, and my personal view, is that it’s something local councillors should be allowed to make a decision on.”

I am not getting at Tom. He did tremendously well to hold his seat and I am very glad he did.

And if that is the party position on selection, I am happy to support it. It certainly was the the old Liberal Party's view back in the 1970s when this was last a live issue.

But given how few powers local authorities now have in education I wonder if it now makes much sense as a policy.

There does tend to be a disconnect between Liberal Democrat national and local campaigning. The former calls for the extension of the market: the latter is concerned with protecting the victims of that extension. I wonder if our policy on selection in education is another example of that.

You may that such a disconnect is inevitable in the rough and tumble of elections, but I think it might do the party good to face up to its existence.

Tom Brake accuses Liam Fox of grovelling to President Duterte

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Tom Brake is in good form in a Liberal Democrat press release from today.

He says:

“Duterte is one of the 21st century’s most sinister leaders and Liam Fox has flown halfway around the world to grovel to him. The fact that the first visit made by Fox since triggering Article 50 is to the Philippines shows just how low this government is willing to stoop in order to secure even a minimal trade deal in the future. 

“According to UK trade statistics, the value of our exports to the Philippines are just £500 million a year- to put this into context our total international trade is currently over £28 billion a month. 

"So not only is Fox blind to the horrific human rights abuses and endemic corruption in the Philippines, he’s also clearly oblivious to the actual realities of doing trade with them. 

"No amount of pandering to corrupt regimes can replace our membership of the Single Market, which is why the Liberal Democrats will continue to fight against the hard, divisive Brexit this government is pursuing."

Talking of Liam Fox, let us read an old article by John Elledge to remind us of why he was obliged to resign as defence secretary in 2011:

He allowed his close friend and best man, Adam Werrity, to take up an unofficial and undeclared role in which he attended meetings at the Ministry of Defence without first obtaining security clearance. Werrity had access to Fox’s diary, printed business cards announcing himself as his advisor, and even joined him at meetings with foreign dignitaries. 

An investigation by then cabinet secretary Sir Gus O'Donnell found that Fox had shown a lack of judgement by blurring the lines between his official role and his personal friendships. 

His report concluded: “The disclosure outside the MoD of details about future visits overseas posed a degree of security risk not only to Dr Fox, but also to the accompanying official party.”

Nick Clegg gets his Freedom Bill

In November 2006 I blogged about an article the Liberal Democrat shadow home secretary had written, using the title: "Nick Clegg: Why we need a Freedom Bill".

Today it became law.

A press release from Great George Street tells me:

A landmark move to roll back Labour’s surveillance state has today become law. The Protection of Freedoms Act will: 

• stop councils snooping 

• end the storage of DNA of innocent people 

• reduce the bureaucracy of CRB checks 

• end 28-day detention 

• stop schools deciding on their own to take fingerprints of children 

• make stalking a criminal offence 

• end wheel clamping on private land 

• delete historical convictions for men who have had consensual gay sex with someone who was over 16

It quotes Tom Brake as saying:

“This is a milestone in the fight to claw back our civil liberties. Under the Labour government, our civil liberties were steadily eroded by an increasingly over-bearing security state. 

“Liberal Democrats have done the right thing to clear up Labour’s mess by ending these shameful practices with the Protection of Freedoms Act. 

“The Coalition Government has already scrapped ID cards and destroyed the National Identity Register and is now making another leap forward with this Act to end Labour’s surveillance state. 

“The Act stops councils snooping, ends the storage of the DNA of innocent people, reduces the bureaucracy of CRB checks, curtails 28-day detention without charge and bans schools from taking children’s fingerprints without parental permission.”

And another release quotes Chair of LGBT+ Liberal Democrats, Adrian Trett:

“The Protection of Freedoms Act is a major win for the LGBT rights. Gay and bisexual men who were convicted for acts that are now perfectly legal will finally be able to get them deleted from their criminal records. It marks the end of the overhang from a bygone era when being gay was still criminalised. 

“It shows the determination of the Liberal Democrats and the Coalition Government to do the right thing. The march for equal rights is not over yet but with today’s news and the consultation on how to introduce equal marriage, we’re steadily chipping away at the final hurdles.”

No doubt we should read the small print, but Great George Street chose the right evening to ring me asking for a donation.

Tom Brake warns against smuggling through Internet surveillance plans

The Daily Telegraph website suggests the government may be planning to smuggle through  measures to increase Internet surveillance by incorporating them into a bill to set up the new National Crime Agency.in the Queen’s Speech.

Tom Brake is quoted by the paper as opposing this move:

There are only a certain number of slots for new laws but we need this to be something that is debatable and improvable on its own terms, not part of something that has broad support like the National Crime Agency. 

The laws in this area are already too weak to protect individual privacy, and they need to be strengthened.

John Pugh on the future of the NHS

John Pugh, Lib Dem MP for Southport and co-chair of the party's backbench health and social care committee, has written a paper on the future of the NHS.

As his own website reports, John Pugh

proposes that the cluster groups of Primary Care Trusts that now temporarily run the local NHS could be the foundation for democratically controlled and clinically led Health Boards similar to those found in Northern Ireland. Such boards would control health and social care avoiding the expensive and disjointed shunting of elderly patients between the NHS and Social Services.

The MP states that he has received a very positive response to his proposals from clinical leaders and says: "It is important that we map out a new direction for the NHS that does not repeat the tired old prescription of more competition and the futile effort to treat the country's health service like a market.

You can download the whole paper from the link above.

It is good to see some Lib Dem thinking on health that goes beyond calls to "Save the NHS", "Kill the Bill" and defend the status quo.

Coupled with the report on the future of policing that Tom Brake published the other day, it suggests that intellectual life is stirring on the party's backbenches.

Tom Brake publishes report on the future of policing

Today Tom Brake, co-chair of the Lib Dem backbench committee on home affairs, justice and equalities, published a report on the future of policing.

Trusted, Professional and Effective: British policing at its best proposes a number of changes to police forces in England around three key areas, which will change the culture of police for the better:

• more trusted – listening to local people and making policing much more responsive to communities’ priorities;
• more professional – setting up the new police professional body with a key responsibility to recommend detailed national minimum recruitment standards for the police;
• more effective – making evidence based policing the defining feature of 21st century policing by establishing the world’s first Institute for Policing Excellence.

The proposed reforms including measures to:

• make Police and Crime Commissioners (PCCs) more accountable to the public between elections;
• create safeguards against the expansion of the role of PCCs;
• create an Institute for Policing Excellence;
• create a Police First development scheme based on the success of Teach First;
• encourage Police and Crime Panels to veto plans to cut police numbers unless all measures to cut bureaucracy have been exhausted

Tom Brake says:

“We have fantastic police officers who are dedicated, able and trying to do their best by the community they serve. Yet as an organisation, the police suffers from a lack of confidence and trust. 

“Many of the criticisms relate to a perceived lack of fairness in the way people have been treated. Labour’s legislative assault on our civil liberties has been disastrous for the reputation of the police who enforced it. 

“It is essential that we clear up Labour’s legacy and end people’s feeling that they are both over-policed and under-protected. This paper demonstrates how the Liberal Democrats would do the right thing to restore public confidence.”

In the introduction Brake thanks Sally Hamwee, his researcher James Kempton, the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust for financial support and "all those who have submitted evidence and met me to discuss the issues facing policing today".

Tom Brake is wrong about retribution

According to BBC News:

Liberal Democrat MP Tom Brake said sentences "should be about restorative justice", not retribution.

I share the concern that some of the sentences being handed down after the riots are too severe. And, as I tweeted the other day, in the long run such sentences will undermine public confidence in the judicial system rather than reinforce it.

But I do not share the view, often expressed by liberals and apparently expressed by Tom Brake here, that retribution should not be a part of punishment. Because retribution - the idea that people must suffer because they have done wrong - is a necessary part of punishment for two reasons.

The first is that it hard to do justice our sense that the punishment should fit the crime without it. The feeling that some recent sentences are too severe presupposes that we know what a just amount of retribution would be.

The second is that dispensing with the idea of retribution makes it hard to explain why we should limit punishment to those convicted of a crime - particularly if we adopt the alternative approach of reforming people that is often espoused on the left.

After all, there are many of us who could do with being reformed, who could be better people. If we remove all idea of retribution from punishment it is hard to see why we should not seek to reform them too. Think of the way that Dr Barnardo took to stealing poor children from their parents because he operated without any constraints.

The alternative approach of restorative justice, which Tom Brake advocates, is attractive, if only because it promises to give young offenders a measure of moral education. They will be made to face the effect of their offending on other people and thereby, we hope, come to understand that it was wrong.

However, the concept is as yet poorly developed in Britain and, for adult offenders at least, I am not convinced that we can wholly separate it from retribution. Is there not some requirement on the offender to do things they would rather not do as part of restorative justice? After all, if a millionaire committed a crime, no cheque, however large, could satisfy the need for restoration unless it were accompanied by a sense that the offender had put himself to trouble in some way that he would rather not have done.

One other point while we are discussing the philosophy of punishment. When I studied philosophy at York 30 years ago, I do not recall the most popular argument in favour of imprisonment these days - that it keeps offenders off the street and prevents further offending - ever being used. There were Utilitarian arguments in favour of prison, but they were always couched in terms of deterring future offences by that offender or deterring others from offending.

Today prison is defended as a way of warehousing the wicked. I am not convinced that this represents progress in our moral thinking.

Tom Brake talks sense on responding to violent demonstrations

A pattern has become established in British politics over the past 20 years. Every time there is a terrorist outrage or an outbreak of serious public disorder parliament rushes to give the police new powers.

Those powers are hardly used afterwards, but that does not stop further powers being given to the police the next time there is a terrorist outrage or an outbreak of serious public disorder.

This process seems to be taking place in the wake of the violence in London on Saturday. The Independent quotes Theresa May speaking in the Commons yesterday:

"Just as the police review their operational tactics, so the Home Office will review the powers available to the police. I have asked the police whether they need further powers to prevent violence before it occurs. I am willing to consider powers which would ban known hooligans from rallies and marches and I will look into the powers the police already have to force the removal of face-coverings and balaclavas.

"If the police need more help to do their work, I will not hesitate in granting it to them,"

At least Tom Brake is talking sense. The co-chair of the Liberal Democrat parliamentary policy committee on home affairs, justice and equalities, said:

"We must not have a knee-jerk reaction to what happened. "Clearly there was a small minority who were out to cause trouble. We need to look in detail into whether the police have sufficient powers to tackle that, or whether they can be deployed differently to ensure such violent scenes don't happen again."

You will not be surprised to learn that Labour takes a different view:

The Labour chairman of the Home Affairs Select Committee, Keith Vaz, who has summoned Bob Broadhurst, commander of the Met, to appear before the committee today, called for "bold and radical" measures, but added: "What we need is a big and open conversation with the police, giving them whatever they need to police... effectively."

You would hope that the "big and open conversation" would be with the public. But the danger is that Labour - embarrassed by the violence after the demonstration and toying with the idea of outflanking the Coalition from the right - will demand more draconian action than Theresa May currently envisages.

Liberal Democrat MPs are revolting

A striking observation from revolts.co.uk:

there now remain very few Lib Dem backbenchers who have remained loyal to the Coalition. Just nine backbench Lib Dems have not voted against the whips in this Parliament. Of these, four – Lorely Burt, Simon Hughes, Tessa Munt and Stephen Williams – abstained on tuition fees.

That leaves five Lib Dem MPs on the backbenches who have remained wholly loyal to the Coalition thus far. In addition to David Laws, they are Tom Brake, Malcolm Bruce, and Don Foster (all of whom voted in favour of raising the cap on tuition fees on Thursday) along with Sir Robert Smith (abroad on business at the time of the tuition fees vote).

Thanks to a tweet from the London Review of Books. It does not seem possible to link to individual posts on revolts.co.uk, but this one is on top at the time of writing.