What the strategic defence and security review said about joint strike fighters

The Guardian reports:

The Ministry of Defence is to abandon plans to buy the preferred fighter for the Royal Navy’s new aircraft carriers, in an embarrassing a U-turn for David Cameron.

The prime minister personally endorsed the decision to equip the over-budget carriers with “cats and traps” so they could catapult and recover a version of the F-35 joint strike fighter (JSF) from their decks.

But the cost of converting the carriers has already reached £2bn, and the JSF model Downing Street wanted has been beset by delays and technical problems.

Here’s what the strategic defence and security review said about the need to abandon Labour’s plan to buy the F-35B version of the joint strike fighter and switch instead to the more capable F-35C, and the consequent need to adapt the new aircraft carriers already ordered:

• A single carrier needs to be fully effective. As currently designed, the Queen Elizabeth will not be fully interoperable with key allies, since their naval jets could not land on it. Pursuit of closer partnership is a core strategic principle for the Strategic Defence and Security Review because it is clear that the UK will in most circumstances act militarily as part of a wider coalition. This will delay the in-service date of the new carrier from 2016 to around 2020. But it will allow greater interoperability with US and French carriers and naval jets. It provides the basis for developing Maritime Task Groups in the future. This should both ensure continuous carrier-strike availability, and reduce the overall carrier protection requirements on the rest of the fleet, releasing ships for other naval tasks such as protection of key sea-lanes, or conducting counter- piracy and narcotics operations.
• The strike needs to be made more capable. Installing the catapult and arrestor will allow the UK to acquire the carrier-variant of Joint Strike Fighter ready to deploy on the converted carrier instead of the short take-off and vertical landing (STOVL) variant. This version of the jet has a longer range and greater payload: this, not large numbers of aircraft, is the critical requirement for precision strike operations in the future. The UK plans to operate a single model of JSF, instead of different land and naval variants. Overall, the carrier-variant of the JSF will be cheaper, reducing through-life costs by around 25%.

It will be interesting to see what Philip Hammond, the defence secretary, has to say when he appears in the Commons later.

Liberal Democrats in government must u-turn quickly over snooping proposals

I’m very wary of rushing to judgements. I think it’s a good character trait to be considered; to think things through before expressing an opinion.

So yesterday, when we heard that the government was considering new proposals to retain yet more of people’s data, I hesitated before condemning. The selective briefing, I thought, was simply not enough information on which to come to a decision whether this was so terrible that I needed to condemn it.

Today, I find myself in a position to do so. The proposals are wrong. They represent a massive increase in the amount of data about our private lives that will be held by companies and accessible to various branches of government.

They tip the delicate balance between liberty and security far too far the wrong way. Not that that has not happened already.

One of the reasons I support this coalition is its strong commitment to civil liberties as expressed in the coalition agreement. I anticipated a decisive shift from Labour’s authoritarianism. And on many fronts the coalition has not disappointed: ID cards and control orders are gone, and the Freedom Bill is working its way through Parliament.

But if it presses ahead with these new snooping proposals all of that will be in vain.

If the coalition does not u-turn on this issue I will, for the first time, have to question whether I can continue to support this government and my party. I really, really, really do not want to have to do that. I really do not.

And on that I am not alone. Many pro-coalition Liberal Democrats are furious, and rightly so. For the Liberal Democrats this could be more serious than tuition fees or the health bill because on civil liberties the entire party can unite.

That Nick Clegg has already made statements supporting the change is extremely worrying. But it shouldn’t stop him reversing his position. That is far better than the alternative, which, frankly, I don’t even want to think about.

What does the Strategic Defence and Security Review say about the monitoring of communications?

In its response to the story in today’s news about the government’s plans to legislate to make it easier to monitor people’s communications, the Home Office said the following:

As set out in the Strategic Defence and Security Review we will legislate as soon as parliamentary time allows to ensure that the use of communications data is compatible with the government’s approach to civil liberties.

What, then, does the Review itself say? The following paragraph, on page 44 (pdf), seems to be the crucial one. It states that the government will:

The language is such that this paragraph could mean the government plans to legislate to do just about anything, which is perhaps why there has been little or no comment on this in the media until now. And presumably the reason we are now seeing media coverage is because of some tactical briefing by some interested party – be that the Home Office hoping to soften people up ahead of the Queen’s Speech or opponents hoping to drum up opposition before any proposal gets off the ground.

What is clear is that the detail around this policy is very much unclear, and I hope Liberal Democrat parliamentarians will be pressing the government to make clear its intentions so we can all respond to a concrete policy rather than mere speculation.

Why Deborah Orr is (mainly) wrong

Slightly curious piece by Deborah Orr in the Guardian today.

If I had to sum up her thesis in a sentence it’d be this: the Lib Dems should stop banging on about raising the threshold and taxing the wealthy and instead argue the merits of the “granny tax” and creating a “cliff-edge” where family tax credits are withdrawn.

That’s a slight caricature, of course, but I think it’s broadly accurate.

A couple of points. Yes, the abolition of age-related income tax allowances is a good idea and well overdue. But first it was the Tories who wanted to do it (the Lib Dems wanted instead to limit the tax reliefs higher earners receive on their pension contributions). And secondly on what possible basis does Orr think that claiming credit for this, instead of the raising of the personal allowance for millions of low earners, would benefit the Lib Dems politically?

The things the Lib Dems actually did achieve in the budget were the raising of the personal allowance and the increases in taxes on the wealthy, both of which are long-standing policy priorities. How would it be at all beneficial to stop talking about those and start claiming credit for much less popular things?

But there is another, more ephemeral, point in Orr’s article which is unfortunately slightly lost beneath the rather bizarre arguments I have just discussed. It’s probably best summed up in her final paragraph, which as far as I can see bears little relation to the rest of the article:

The Lib Dems have got a little wiser since the early days, when they were forever on the stump, disingenuously flogging Conservative policies and looking shocked because no one was thanking them for their trouble. But not much wiser. They are still nakedly thrilled that they got to hang out with the big boys at all. This only serves to emphasise what little boys they are themselves.

There is, I think, some truth in that. The Lib Dems in government have been naive. George Osborne, master strategist that he is, constantly has an eye on the effect of government policy on his party and its electoral prospects. The Lib Dems have been less focussed on that and more focussed – admirably one might say – on ensuring that the coalition not only survives but prospers.

I think the point is that we can do both. The difficulty, though, is that’s quite a difficult job for Nick Clegg to do. Governing is tough enough. Perhaps Clegg, then, needs to find his own Osborne; someone who unashamedly keeps an eye on the strategy, on the raw politics. The Tories are better at it than us – they’ve had more practice. But we’ve been in government for nearly two years now, and we should be doing better.

Phil Woolas: political consultant (no, really)

Phil Woolas  - remember him?

He was, of course, the Labour MP for Oldham East and Saddleworth between 1997 and 2010. In November 2010 he was unceremoniously kicked out of Parliament after being found guilty by an election court of telling serious untruths about the character of his Liberal Democrat opponent, in what were undoubtedly the most shocking election leaflets of modern times.

But now Woolas has returned to the political scene, only this time as a “consultant” at a new firm called Wellington Street Partners. It’s not exactly clear from the website what in the political world Phil Woolas will be providing advice on. Presumably not election law.

The website does, though, provide this very interesting biography of the former MP:

Phil Woolas was Labour MP for the marginal seat of Oldham East & Saddleworth for 13 years. He served as Parliamentary Private Secretary to Lord Gus MacDonald, Minister of State for Transport, Lord Commissioner of the Treasury, deputy leader of the House of Commons, Minister of State for Local Government and Regeneration, Minister of State for Civil Contingency, Minister of State for Environment and Minister of State for Immigration and Customs. He also served as Minister for the North West of England.

Phil was a leading member of the Tony Blair and Gordon Brown Governments.

Prior to his time in Parliament, Phil served as a national official for the GMB trade union. His early career was in television where he worked for ITV, Newsnight and Channel Four News. He has published numerous articles and essays and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.

I can’t quite put my finger on it just now, but I’m sure there’s something missing there…

The budget is an opportunity for boldness, but is Osborne ducking it?

Fiscal crises are actually a good time to take a strategic look at the tax system. While the books are being balanced, and some taxes increased to help do so, it makes sense to step back and think about where we want the burdens in the system to fall most heavily.

So this week’s budget was the coalition’s chance for boldness. Some think it does look set to be a radical budget, relatively speaking. But I can’t help thinking that – if the leaks provide an accurate picture – George Osborne might be ducking out and playing it safe.

Just think what this budget could have done. The Liberal Democrats were pushing for the immediate raising of the income tax personal allowance to £10,000. A few Tories agreed, but more wanted the 50p rate scrapped.

If Osborne had been being radical, he could have done both of these things immediately, paid for by taxes on expensive properties, further increases in taxes on capital gains and measures to crack down on the well-known specific instances of tax avoidance.

If he had done so, this week’s budget would have been a multi-billion pound shift in the tax system, both from taxing income to taxing wealth and, overall, shifting the burden further onto the wealthiest and off the poorest.

From media reports, it seems clear that the impediment to such boldness was actually the prime minister himself, who doesn’t like the idea of wealth taxes like a mansion tax, which actually George Osborne is quite open to.

So don’t let it be said that it’s the Liberal Democrats in the coalition who are impeding radicalism.

This budget does look set to do some fairly big things. But on taxation in particular, it looks like the coalition is failing to turn the fiscal crisis into an opportunity.

Infographic: Liberal Democrat achievements in government

By the very clever Mark Pack: