Commenting on Sir Paul Stephenson’s warning of a surge in burglaries fuelled by the economic downturn, Liberal Democrat Shadow Home Secretary, Chris Huhne said: “This is more evidence that Britain is being hit by a credit crunch crime wave.”

“Now is clearly not the time to be squeezing police budgets.

“Ministers should scrap the wasteful ID Cards scheme and spend the money on 10,000 extra police to keep our streets safe.”

The Cleethorpes community is invited to help shape the future of their town at the Cleethorpes Renaissance Community Planning Weekend on Friday 5 June, 2pm – 7.30pm and Saturday 6 June, 10.30am – 3.30pm at Cleethorpes Memorial Hall, Grimsby Road, Cleethorpes, DN35 8AH.

The aim of the weekend is to bring together everyone with an interest in the regeneration of Cleethorpes and produce a practical vision for the future.

This vision will form the basis for the creation of a new charter and strategic development framework for Cleethorpes, which will set the direction for the renaissance of the town over the coming years.

The Community Planning Weekend is being organised by John Thompson and Partners (JTP), architects and community planners as part of Yorkshire Forward’s Urban Renaissance programme, with the support of North East Lincolnshire Council.

According to the Telegraph, recent research suggests that the proportion of teenagers from the wealthiest parts of England who enter university is twice that of the most deprived areas.

In the poorest areas of ,only a third of school leavers continue into higher education, but in the richest areas, the rate is almost 60%.

According to official statistics for admissions to higher education from 2001 to 2005, in 20 of the poorest council wards in less than 5% went on to university, but in some better-off parts of the country almost 100 % of school-leavers progressed into higher education. In 360 council wards, the rate was 99%

Last year the Department of Innovation, Universities and Skills spent £2.3 billion on bursaries for poorer students and “outreach” projects to encourage those from deprived areas to apply to university.

David Willetts, the shadow universities secretary said:

“These statistics reveal the scandal of low social mobility in Britain today. Going to university should depend on academic ability, and not on where you were born. Millions of pounds have been spent on improving access to higher education, but results to match.

“Far too many school leavers from poorer backgrounds, who have similar aspirations to their wealthier peers, are simply not getting the opportunities they need to match their ambitions.”

Despite repeated Government promises to increase social mobility; children in Britain remain more likely to end up in the same social and occupational class as their parents than those in most other developed countries.

A report from the London School of Economics in 2007 concluded that low social mobility in the UK has not improved in the last 30 years, and Gordon Brown last year admitted that Labour had not done enough to let the children of poor families advance themselves, admitting:

A child’s social class background at birth is still the best predictor of how well he or she will do at school and later on in life.”

According to the Guardian, Gordon Brown is facing a ­crisis of confidence inside the Parliamentary Labour Party as a record number of Labour MPs have applied for a seat in the House of Lords after the next general election.

This is a sign that many Labour MP’s are expecting to lose their seats, resigned to the prospect that the party is heading for a heavy defeat in the next general election by the Conservatives.

The Guardian says that at least 52 MPs have applied for places in the House of Lords.

These MPs are said to include current chairs of select committees as well as past and serving middle and junior ranking ­ministers.

Earlier today I received a letter from Danny Alexander, Chief of staff to Nick Clegg, which I thought you might like to see: 

Dear Les

Nick Clegg has had a great few weeks taking a strong stand on cleaning up Parliament and leading the call for a complete overhaul of our political system. Last week at Prime Minister’s Question Time he challenged Gordon Brown to reform our electoral systems. Now even Brown’s own ministers are echoing Nick’s call. I hope that you have been able to see the lead article in today’s Guardian which sets out a 100-day plan to reform government.

Tonight we will be screening a brand new Party Election Broadcast recorded this week in which Nick deals with these issues – you can watch it online now. He will be making the case to:

• Give people the right to sack MPs
• Stop all big party political donations
• Elect the House of Lords
• Make the voting system fair – so that governments can’t just get all that power and all that money with only a minority of you voting for them
• Put an end to self serving politics and put you back in charge

But Nick can’t do it all on his own. He needs our help.

We need to demonstrate that at long last there is a groundswell for real reform of our broken system. If you want to see British politics changed in this way then you can visit our new campaign site www.TakeBackPower.org and sign Nick’s petition.

But don’t stop there. I’m sure we all know friends and family who have been appalled by the recent expenses scandal. Why not show them we are different? Email the www.TakeBackPower.org web address on to five other people and help Nick change politics for good.

Best wishes,

Danny Alexander MP
Chief of Staff to Nick Clegg

Warm words and rhetoric are easy. We must seize the mood and enact a radical programme of reform within 100 days.

Finally the dam has broken, and everyone is talking about changing Britain’s political system. For decades reformers have been thwarted by Westminster inertia. But the MPs’ expenses scandal has overturned old certainties and made change possible.

This moment must be seized by all who want a different kind of politics. Warm words, rhetoric and consideration are not enough; indeed, they are a guarantee that little will happen. So let us bar the gates of Westminster and stop MPs leaving for their summer holidays until this crisis has been sorted out, and every nook and cranny of our political system has been reformed.

Today I’m setting out a plan of action to get all the changes we need delivered in just 100 days – making it possible for MPs to be sacked by constituents, abolishing the House of Lords, getting corrupt money out of politics and changing the electoral system to give everyone a voice. People will say it isn’t possible – parliament can’t act that quickly. I say the innate conservatism that marks out our political establishment is part of the problem. Let’s stop all this self-congratulatory hype about the mother of parliaments and get on with improving it.

Momentum will ebb away unless we act quickly. Delay would be a victory for those who want to confine change to the bare minimum – the two establishment parties who will talk up reform long enough for the storm to pass, then kick it into the long grass for good.

David Cameron’s proposals set out in the Guardian on Tuesday were a masterful example of well-judged rhetoric free of substance and conviction. Open-source software, new select committee chairs and legislative text messages will not rescue British democracy. They are designed, I fear, to provide verbal cover for maintaining the status quo.

Real political change is about taking power from those who have hoarded it for themselves, and distributing it to others. So change will only be possible if the vested interests that have benefited from the way things are accept that they can no longer preside over an institutional stitch-up. For generations the Labour and Conservative parties have ­colluded to keep out competition. They are like a corporate duopoly, ­setting the rules of the game to maintain dominance. And just like in economics, it’s ordinary people who suffer: taken for granted, and deprived of the ability to make different choices to those imposed upon them.

That is why what Cameron did not say is more revealing than what he did. No mention of the murky business of party funding. No mention of the scandal of an unelected second chamber. The rejection of any change to an electoral system that hands power to governments on a fraction of the vote. Without these changes, British politics will continue to be a game of pass the parcel between two old parties, while the rest of the country switches off, So instead of long-term consideration of the possibility of tinkering, let us have 100 days of real action: swift, decisive and confident. It really is possible. The details of a reformed system of party funding have already been thrashed out between the parties, months ago. Sir Hayden Phillips secured outline agreement to ban donations of more than £50,000, limit spending to £100m over a parliament and shake up union contributions. The reason it wasn’t adopted was because the Conservatives walked out, keen to protect donations from tax exiles such as Lord Ashcroft. But there is no reason not to return to what was all but agreed, and enforce it. The political parties and elections bill, now before parliament, could be amended and adopted within weeks.

Similarly, on House of Lords reform, the principles of a fully elected chamber have already been exhaustively debated and adopted by MPs. As in any bicameral system, peers should be elected on a different constituency basis and electoral cycle to MPs. Details could be decided on and introduced in the constitutional renewal bill being promoted in the House of Lords by Paul Tyler.

And then there’s electoral reform. The ideal solution would be an Irish-style single transferable vote system in which voters elect the person, not the party. But even alternative vote plus – as first advocated by Roy Jenkins in 1998 and now backed by Alan Johnson – would ensure most MPs have a personal constituency link with their voters, as already occurs in Germany and Scotland. Labour made a promise more than a decade ago to hold a referendum on the Jenkins proposals. If the government won’t call a general election, let us have this referendum in early September, as the culmination of 100 days of reform.

Together, over the next 100 days, we could achieve nothing less than the total reinvention of British politics. These months could become a great moment in British political history, rather than a shabby footnote to a shameful month of scandal. Let us seize, not squander, the opportunity for change.

Liberal Democrat leader, Nick Clegg, said earlier today that Britain’s politicians should be stopped from taking their summer holidays until the constitutional crisis started by the expenses row is settled and the political system is completely reformed.

In the Guardian Nick Clegg said:

“Let us bar the gates of Westminster and stop MPs leaving for their summer holidays until this crisis has been sorted out, and every nook and cranny of our political system reformed,

“I’m setting out a plan of action to get all the changes we need delivered in just 100 days – making it possible for MPs to be sacked by their constituents, abolishing the House of Lords, getting corrupt money out of politics and changing the electoral system to give a voice to everyone.”

Mr. Clegg’s plan would then introduce major constitutional reforms:

• Legislation would be passed to introduce a fixed parliamentary term of four years, starting from. This would remove the prime minister’s right to set the date for general elections.
• The new Commons Speaker would convene all-party talks to introduce changes to parliamentary procedures which would include giving MPs the right to decide the Parliamentary timetable. This would allow MPs a greater chance to scrutinise government spending and bring ministers to confirmation hearings.
• Parliament would approve legislation to allow a referendum to be held on electoral system to give a voice to everyone.”
• Parliament would pass legislation to replace the House of Lords with a wholly elected senate.

Mr Clegg said the crisis over expenses provides a historic opportunity to act:

“Finally the dam has broken, and every­one is talking about changing Britain’s political system. For decades, political reformers have been thwarted by the inertia of Westminster, but the expenses scandal has overturned old certainties and made change possible. This moment must be seized by all those who want a different kind of politics in Britain. Warm words, rhetoric and consideration are not enough; indeed they are a guarantee that little will happen.”

The Leader of the Liberal Democrats, Nick Clegg told the BBC earlier today that the panel had been set up to examine Liberal Democrat MPs’ expenses had “so far” not found any of the Lib Dem MPs guilty of similar things to those from the other parties.

“If any Lib Dem MP is discovered to have done some of the things other parties’ MPs have done – not paying capital gains tax, flipping second homes, claiming for mortgages that did not exist – we would refer them to the independent Standards Commissioner,”

“It should then be a matter for people in the constituency to sack those MPs”,

Speaking later on the BBC News at 6pm,Nick Clegg said: I would much rather move to a system were local people having the power to sack their MPs; if they consider that they have done something wrong.”

Conservative opposition to the European Arrest Warrant (EAW) would cost the British taxpayer over £25m a year, if they win the next election, according to research by the Liberal Democrats.

Previous Liberal Democrat research has revealed that murderers, rapists and paedophiles would be sunning themselves on the Costa del Crime, rather than facing British justice, if the Tories had their way.

Conservative MEPs voted against the EAW, which has slashed extradition times between Britain and other EU countries from an average of 18 months to just 43 days. Since the EAW was introduced, 920 criminals have been swiftly extradited from British prisons to face justice in Europe.

If the Tories had had their way, this opposition would have cost the taxpayer £50m since the EAW was launched in 2004. In 2008 alone, the Tories would have spent over £25m delaying extraditions. Keeping someone in prison waiting to be extradited for 18 months costs the taxpayer nearly £60,000, compared to less than £5,000 for 43 days.

Commenting, Liberal Democrat Shadow Home Secretary, Chris Huhne said:

“Not only would the Tories prefer that criminals could escape justice on the Costa del Crime, they want to spend our money housing foreign rogues.

“Even if we catch them, the Tories would rather we housed criminals in overcrowded British jails for a year and a half than send them to face justice in Europe in a month and a half.

“It is outrageous that they would rather indulge in dogma and lavish millions on warehousing criminals than put them on trial.

“Unbelievably, this waste of taxpayers’ money is the best case scenario. Without the increased co-operation between police forces fostered by the European Arrest Warrant, many of these criminals might still be stalking British streets.

“David Cameron must now stop being the criminal’s friend and ditch his party’s ridiculous opposition to the European Arrest Warrant which forces villains to face justice.”

Hospital admissions for girls under 18 with eating disorders have risen by almost half in five years, research by the Liberal Democrats has revealed. Admissions for girls under 9 have risen by 25% since 2003.

The figures, uncovered in a Parliamentary answer, show that:

• Admissions into hospital where the primary diagnosis related to an eating disorder for girls under 18 rose to 825 – a 47% increase
• Overall hospital admissions for eating disorders in women are up 25% 
• Admissions for girls under 9 are up 25% from 35 to 44

A regional breakdown is included.

Commenting, Liberal Democrat Shadow Health Secretary, Norman Lamb said:

“This dramatic increase in hospital admissions is a tragic indictment of the Government’s failure to tackle the problems of eating disorders.

“Access to support services is dreadfully inadequate in many parts of the country. Early intervention can make a massive difference in these cases and prevent a descent into crisis.

“Ministers have failed to provide better mental health treatment in this country. Children shouldn’t be getting to the stage where they are so ill they need to be hospitalised before they get help.”