Responses from the parties
Please also see the correspondence section to view the accompanying text that accompanied the parties' responses.
| Question |
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Tax |
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| Should people pay income tax in direct proportion to their wages?
(IE no tiers in rates, just one set percentage) |
No response as at 12/3/05! | No response as at 12/3/05! | No. Liberal Democrats believe in progressive income tax, with the rich paying a higher proportion of their marginal income in tax. We therefore support both the existing higher rate of 40% and new top rate of 50% for incomes over £100,000 pa. We also believe that the first part of a person’s income should pay no income tax. |
| Should the rich be subject to higher rates of income tax? | No response as at 12/3/05! | No response as at 12/3/05! | See previous answer. |
| Should people with more than one house be taxed more for their second property? | No response as at 12/3/05! | No response as at 12/3/05! | Under our proposal to abolish Council Tax, first homes will not be taxed but there will be a Local Income Tax instead. Second homes would be subject to a local rate based on the value of the site. |
| Should stamp duty be directly proportional of the cost of the house? (IE no tiers in rates, just one set percentage) | No response as at 12/3/05! | No response as at 12/3/05! | No. We have no proposals to move to a simple flat percentage rate. |
| Should people that fill community roles e.g. teachers, nurses etc receive additional tax breaks? | No response as at 12/3/05! | No response as at 12/3/05! | No. Key workers should be paid an appropriate level of remuneration through basic pay and any local weightings – this is simpler than tax complications. |
| Should taxation of goods and services reflect government and world policy i.e. higher tax on fossil fuels, lower tax on biodegradable packaging? | No response as at 12/3/05! | No response as at 12/3/05! | Yes. We are strongly committed to environmental tax reform on an overall tax neutral basis, shifting tax off ‘goods’ like jobs and onto ‘bads’ like pollution. |
| Education | |||
| Should secondary school education be free? | No response as at 12/3/05! | No response as at 12/3/05! | Yes. |
| Should college school education be free? | No response as at 12/3/05! | No response as at 12/3/05! | Yes. |
| Should university school education be free with no charges? | No response as at 12/3/05! | No response as at 12/3/05! | Yes. |
| Should secondary schools be allowed to restrict entry by ability? | No response as at 12/3/05! | No response as at 12/3/05! | No. Nor should primary schools. |
| Should adult education be free? | No response as at 12/3/05! | No response as at 12/3/05! | Yes. We would like to move towards an entitlement to free tuition for an initial qualification up to NVQ Level 3. However, for reasons of cost we are not able to make a commitment to remove all tuition charges for adult education in the short term. |
| Should educational institutions be allowed to gain corporate sponsorship to assist budgets? | No response as at 12/3/05! | No response as at 12/3/05! | Public Funding should cover core school budgets. However, sponsorship of additional facilities should be allowed as long as this does not compromise academic freedom or otherwise contravene the public interest (eg, by undermining healthy eating initiatives). |
| Should parents directly fund schools when there is a budget shortfall? | No response as at 12/3/05! | No response as at 12/3/05! | Public Funding should cover core school budgets. Obviously schools are free to fundraise for additional equipment or activities. |
| Should children be paid to attend school? | No response as at 12/3/05! | No response as at 12/3/05! | While we do not propose paying children to attend school during compulsory education up to age 16, we are sympathetic to giving targeted Educational Maintenance Allowances to encourage students from poor backgrounds to carry on in post-16 education. |
| Should benefits be withdrawn from families whose children do not attend school regularly? | No response as at 12/3/05! | No response as at 12/3/05! | No. |
| Health | |||
| Should cosmetic surgery be allowed under the NHS? | No response as at 12/3/05! | No response as at 12/3/05! | Reconstructive surgery, for example following an accident, is justifiable as a public responsibility. Purely cosmetic treatment is not however a priority for limited NHS resources. This kind of issue could in the longer term be decided locally through elected local government. See next answer. |
| Should spending priorities be dictated by central government? | No response as at 12/3/05! | No response as at 12/3/05! | No. Although some national minimum standards are required, we would like to see more local democratic accountability over health service spending priorities. |
| Should the NHS be open to all UK residents? | No response as at 12/3/05! | No response as at 12/3/05! | Yes. |
| Should patients be able to transfer funds they are entitled to under the NHS to private hospitals so they can have an operation more quickly? | No response as at 12/3/05! | No response as at 12/3/05! | No. This would undermine the service available to those unable to afford to pay the substantial difference between the costs of NHS and private care. |
| Pensions | |||
| Should the state pension be means tested? | No response as at 12/3/05! | No response as at 12/3/05! | No. |
| Should the state pension be linked to inflation? | No response as at 12/3/05! | No response as at 12/3/05! | We will shortly be publishing new detailed proposals for reform of the State pension, including arrangements for indexation. |
| Should the state pension be abolished? | No response as at 12/3/05! | No response as at 12/3/05! | No. |
| Should people be legally required to save for their retirement? | No response as at 12/3/05! | No response as at 12/3/05! | No. |
| Should families that look after their elderly relatives be entitled to receive an additional ‘Family Care Pension’? | No response as at 12/3/05! | No response as at 12/3/05! | No. However we would like to see more support, both practical and financial, for those with caring responsibilities (including those caring for younger disabled people). |
| Ethics | |||
| Should the death penalty be bought back? |
No response as at 12/3/05! | No response as at 12/3/05! | No. |
| Should prostitution be legalised? | No response as at 12/3/05! | No response as at 12/3/05! | Yes. Prostitution is already legal. We would also permit legalised brothels, to be licensed and regulated by local government. |
| Should cannabis be legalised? | No response as at 12/3/05! | No response as at 12/3/05! | Yes. However the UK is a signatory to the Vienna Conventions which require trafficking in cannabis to be illegal. In the short term, we would therefore adopt a policy of not prosecuting people for personal use or cultivation of cannabis. |
| Should class A drugs be given out under the NHS in controlled environments? | No response as at 12/3/05! | No response as at 12/3/05! | Yes. We believe that carefully controlled prescription of heroin to dependent users can play a role as part of a strategy for controlling and overcoming dependency. |
| Should penalty for drug users be treatment rather than jail? | No response as at 12/3/05! | No response as at 12/3/05! | Yes. |
| Should schools be forced to be agnostic? | No response as at 12/3/05! | No response as at 12/3/05! | No. |
| Should the UK have invaded Iraq given what we know now? | No response as at 12/3/05! | No response as at 12/3/05! | No. |
| Should people coming to live in the UK be required to learn to reach a certain level of spoken English? | No response as at 12/3/05! | No response as at 12/3/05! | No. Speaking English is of course a great advantage in playing a full part in society, and there should be every opportunity and encouragement to learn. Compulsion however is likely to be counter-productive, and for asylum seekers is obviously inappropriate. |
| Should cloning of humans be allowed? | No response as at 12/3/05! | No response as at 12/3/05! | We support the existing ban on reproductive cloning of humans. However we support stem cell research, which involves non-reproductive cloning. |
| Should fox hunting be banned? | No response as at 12/3/05! | No response as at 12/3/05! | Yes. This is however a free vote issue for Liberal Democrat MPs. |
| Should corporations pay mandatory government-defined pay-offs if they announce job losses whist posting large profits? | No response as at 12/3/05! | No response as at 12/3/05! | No. |
| Europe | |||
| Should Britain adopt the Euro? | No response as at 12/3/05! | No response as at 12/3/05! | Yes. We support British membership of the Euro, subject to negotiating a competitive entry rate and to the approval of the British people in a referendum. |
| What powers should a central European government have? | No response as at 12/3/05! | No response as at 12/3/05! | We broadly support the powers set out in the draft EU Constitution as agreed in June 2004. |
| Environment / Transport | |||
| Do you approve of the London Congestion Charge? | No response as at 12/3/05! | No response as at 12/3/05! | Yes. We do not however support the extension of the zone proposed by Mayor Livingstone. |
| Should the Congestion Charge be deployed in other cities? | No response as at 12/3/05! | No response as at 12/3/05! | Yes. But only at local discretion, where the local authority believes there are adequate public transport alternatives to the private car and where serious congestion occurs. |
| Should petrol continue to be taxed as a luxury item? | No response as at 12/3/05! | No response as at 12/3/05! | We do not propose any significant real terms cuts in fuel duty overall, although we do favour lower rates for low carbon or non-carbon fuels. |
| Should heavy/large personal vehicles (SUVs) be more heavily taxed? | No response as at 12/3/05! | No response as at 12/3/05! | Yes. As we support graduating VED on the basis of emissions, larger vehicles such as SUVs would tend to pay more. |
| Should more cycle lanes be introduced? | No response as at 12/3/05! | No response as at 12/3/05! | Yes. |
| Should the rail networks / bus companies be privatised? | No response as at 12/3/05! | No response as at 12/3/05! | The national rail network should be vested with a public interest company. We take no dogmatic view on whether local bus services should be run by private companies or local government. |
| Should the rail networks / bus companies be subsidised? | No response as at 12/3/05! | No response as at 12/3/05! | Yes. Where there is a clear public interest in running a service which would not be viable purely from commercial income, public subsidy may be justified. |
| Should families with more than one car be taxed? | No response as at 12/3/05! | No response as at 12/3/05! | No. Every vehicle should be taxed individually, regardless how many a particular family has. |
| Should public money be spent on subsidising fuel efficient cars? | No response as at 12/3/05! | No response as at 12/3/05! | We support lower rates of VED for cars with low carbon emissions – this would not require extra public expenditure as we would recoup the costs by putting higher VED on vehicles with high emissions. |
| Should tolls be introduced on Motorways? | No response as at 12/3/05! | No response as at 12/3/05! | No. However we would allow local congestion charging schemes where they are introduced to apply to motorways. In the longer term, we want to explore distance-based charging for all public roads (with commensurate reductions in other motoring taxes). |
| Do you approve of GM crops? | No response as at 12/3/05! | No response as at 12/3/05! | We oppose commercial growing of GM crops until field trials on their impact have been completed and fully evaluated. We will insist on rigorous schemes of labelling and traceability of GM in food to guarantee consumer choice. |
| Should public funds be used to accelerate the adoption of sustainable power generation (wind / wave turbines)? | No response as at 12/3/05! | No response as at 12/3/05! | Yes. However we would do this by supporting R & D for renewable technologies generally (not just wind/wave)and by placing obligations on electricity suppliers to take 20% of electricity from such sources by 2020, rather than direct subsidies to commercial generators. |
| Workplace | |||
| Should the minimum wage be abolished? | No response as at 12/3/05! | No response as at 12/3/05! | No. We support a UK-wide National Minimum Wage. We also believe that where there are elected devolved governments, they should be able to set a higher minimum in their area, after taking advice from the Low Pay Commission. |
| Should the members of any union (including essential services) have the right to strike? | No response as at 12/3/05! | No response as at 12/3/05! | No. It is currently illegal for the Police to strike, and we have no plans to change this. In other key services, we favour pendulum arbitration. |
| Should there be an individual cap on state benefits? | No response as at 12/3/05! | No response as at 12/3/05! | No. |
| Should there be a time limit on unemployment benefit? | No response as at 12/3/05! | No response as at 12/3/05! | Yes. We have no plans to extend the existing six month time limit on Job Seekers Allowance. Those unemployed for longer should then be eligible for the non-contributory benefit Income Support. |
| Should the unemployed undertake education/training/apprenticeship to gain benefits? | No response as at 12/3/05! | No response as at 12/3/05! | No. Those on JSA or Income Support benefits have to show they are actively seeking work, and may fail to do so if they unreasonably refuse to undertake training to improve their employability. However each case must be judged on its merits. |
| Should labour shortages be filled by non-Nationals? | No response as at 12/3/05! | No response as at 12/3/05! | Yes. In addition to improving skills in the existing workforce to fill vacancies, we believe that there should be an approach similar to the US Green Card system to facilitate entry of workers with valuable skills. |
| Should there be a compulsory retirement age? | No response as at 12/3/05! | No response as at 12/3/05! | No. |
| Constitution | |||
| Should the Lords have the power to veto law? | No response as at 12/3/05! | No response as at 12/3/05! | No. We support a delaying power on non-financial bills for a reformed Upper House. |
| Should the prime minister defer to the majority of his party on issues? | No response as at 12/3/05! | No response as at 12/3/05! | Yes. |
| Are voters informed enough to vote on major issues through referendum? | No response as at 12/3/05! | No response as at 12/3/05! | Yes. We support referenda on issue for major constitutional importance. |
| Should the member countries of the UK be able to define their own laws? | No response as at 12/3/05! | No response as at 12/3/05! | Yes. We believe in primary legislative powers for the devolved parliaments/assemblies. |
| Under what circumstances should a referendum occur? | No response as at 12/3/05! | No response as at 12/3/05! | We support referenda on major constitutional issues, for example the European Constitution. We do not generally advocate referenda on individual policy questions – we have elected representatives to take those decisions. |
| Personal Liberty | |||
| Should identity cards be adopted? | No response as at 12/3/05! | No response as at 12/3/05! | No. We are strongly opposed to compulsory ID cards as proposed by the government, which would waste huge sums for money and not deliver the claimed benefits. |
| Should the state be able to eavesdrop on email/or phone communications without a warrant issued by an independent judge? | No response as at 12/3/05! | No response as at 12/3/05! | No. |
| Should personal encryption of communications by individuals be legal? | No response as at 12/3/05! | No response as at 12/3/05! | Yes. |
| Priorities | |||
| If you have £100m in total, what would you spend on: | In our last Alternative Budget, the major extra spending proposals were to end tuition fees and top-up fees in higher education, to end charges for personal care for those needing long term care, and to relieve the burden of council tax in the transition to abolishing it. These would all be funded from the £4.7 billion raised by a 50% income tax rate on incomes over £100,000. | ||
| Environment? | No response as at 12/3/05! | No response as at 12/3/05! | See above |
| Education? | No response as at 12/3/05! | No response as at 12/3/05! | See above |
| Health? | No response as at 12/3/05! | No response as at 12/3/05! | See above |
| Transport? | No response as at 12/3/05! | No response as at 12/3/05! | See above |
| Arts? | No response as at 12/3/05! | No response as at 12/3/05! | See above |
Concept, Name and Text (c) Matt Dyson 2004