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Published: 23 September, 2010

LIBERAL Democrats from Camden were in the thick of trying to change government policy at the party’s conference here in Liverpool, even though the group insists there are no regrets about forming a coalition with the Conservatives.

And rather than lose members as a result of linking up with the Tories, senior Lib Dem figures in Camden said their membership had actually gone up since the general election in May. 

There was certainly a huge clamour among members from north London to hear leader Nick Clegg give his main conference speech on Monday afternoon when he delivered his “stick with us” address.

Camden chiefs are keen to dismiss claims that the Coalition deal will have cooled the support of left-leaning voters attracted in significant numbers during the run-up to this year’s General Election.

They weren’t helped by  Mr Clegg’s assertion at the start of the conference that the party was not a “receptacle for left-wing dissatisfaction”. In Camden Lib Dems have spent several years wooing new members from Labour.

Nevertheless, members from Camden and neighbouring Islington – traditionally Labour boroughs – turned up in force to the conference set around Liverpool’s Albert Docks and they insisted that team spirit remains good.

“We spent four years in coalition with the Conservatives locally – so we have got used to how it works,” said Flick Rea, the longest serving Lib Dem councillor in Camden.

Comments like “what was the alternative?” and  “you don’t enter politics to sit on the sidelines” were frequently heard along with a new one  – about how the Conservatives had been “surprisingly fair” in the brokering of the coalition.

For all the enthusiasm about being in power and seeing friends and colleagues walking around their first conference as government ministers, however, local members found themselves having to press ministers for concessions on a series of policies. Benefit reforms, the use of independent free schools and changes to way the National Health Service is structured, were all largely considered as Tory-led programmes causing alarm.

But rather than  seeing these concerns as evidence of early tension with their Conservative partners, Lib Dems from Camden said they were buoyed by having the chance to influence policy during private meetings with new ministers and at fringe meetings.

A record number of journalists applied for press passes and the tone of the training workshops and fringe sessions was more businesslike than ever before.

With this new sense of importance, Lib Dem councillor Chris Naylor said he was able to actively track down ministers and claimed to have won discretionary relief for families in north London facing potential eviction due to proposed cuts to housing benefits – seen as the biggest win for Camden’s group here this week (see separate story).

Similarly, his colleague Councillor John Bryant secured a meeting with health minister Paul Burstow and said 

his worries about health reforms had been taken firmly on board. Cllr Bryant wants to ensure new Health and Well-Being boards are dominated by elected councillors rather than civil servants.

“We have a National Health Service but we want a local health service too,” he said.

More publicly, schools minister Sarah Teather faced embarrassment as conference passed a motion distancing the party from Conservative free school plans – the process of allowing new independent schools to be set up by parents and local groups, operating beyond council control and setting their own admissions. Rank and file members called for a boycott of them despite Ms Teather’s pleading from the stage to water down the criticism of one of Conservative education secretary Michael Gove’s flagship ideas.

Camden is one of the few areas to take up the  free school option after parents won permission to open St Luke’s Primary School in a church hall in Hampstead next year. Ms Teather said she did not want hands to be tied in the familiar battles with school place shortages but members forced home their opposition from the conference floor.

James Kempton, former leader of the Lib Dems in Islington, an authority with which Camden is currently making close ties, said from the platform that he did not want to adopt an “opposition mindset” in government.

But he warned: “This is our chance to put flesh on the coalition agreement, a chance for the grassroots to say what we will or will not tolerate in the Whitehall deals that lie ahead. In dismantling the centrist state we have to make sure we don’t end up with a deregulated education market. Competition alone will not raise up standards. We know it won’t and we have to say that loud and clear today.”

Belsize ward councillor Tom Simon requested to speak in debate but was not called. He offered a more moderate view amid calls for boycotts, although he was guarded on a full scale endorsement of policies that were “90 to 95 per cent Conservative-led.”

“Camden has acute shortages of primary schools and we can’t restrain ourselves,” he said after the debate. “We have to use all the tools available, even if we don’t particularly like the tools. In my area the majority of parents would like community schools but their first priority is to have somewhere to send their children in the first place.” 

The debate on Monday morning had similarities with the manner in which Labour members often rebelled against central policy at their  conferences when they were in power. Then Labour chiefs were criticised for riding roughshod over dissent. The pressure is on the Lib Dem leadership is to avoid showing the same apparent indifference to the views of stalwart members. 

Deputy leader Councillor Matt Sanders, deputising for leader Keith Moffitt who is recovering from an eye operation, insisted: “The conference gives the Lib Dems the chance for members to have their say in the way the government is run now, that’s why so many are here. There is a bigger delegation that last year and people are using the opportunity to have an input not only into Lib Dem policy, but government policy too.”

Naylor says hardship funds could mitigate benefit cap

PENSIONS minister Steve Webb told the New Journal on Monday that a fund used to help families likely to be hit worst by government caps to housing benefit will be trebled.

Claimed as a win for Liberal Democrats from Camden campaigning against their own government’s policy at conference, Mr Webb said he recognised that there would be cases of particular  hardship in inner-city areas like Camden when new plans to severely limit housing benefits payments were introduced.

In response, Mr Webb will hand extra money to local authorities to use on a case-by-case basis.

He said: “We are not saying we are going back on the principle. People who don't qualify for housing benefit, who have jobs but don’t earn large salaries and families, still have to make choices about what area is affordable for them. People who receive benefits should not be exempt from that. But we know that areas like Camden there will be cases of particular hardship where councils should be able to help. That’s why we will treble a discretionary fund for local authorities.”

The fund will be worth £60million, although an exact figure on what share Camden will be entitled has not been provided. Camden feels it has a strong case for help because the capping of housing benefit will make large swathes of the borough, with its expensive market rents.

Former housing chief Councillor Chris Naylor collared Mr Webb at a breakfast fringe meeting on Monday morning. He said: “The changes could mean 2,000 Camden families having to move home, not only facing the need somewhere cheaper to live but disrupting their education and health support.”

Cllr Naylor said the promise of financial help would not solve the problem but could mitigate some of the worst affects.

There are fears that if benefits are capped then families with long associations with Camden could be forced to move elsewhere, possibly even out of London. 

Labour finance spokesman Councillor Theo Blackwell said: “The trebling of this fund was announced in July but there is no guarantee what share will be directed to ­London.”

Power play – An exciting first act, but what next?

THE location was clever. The Albert Docks of Liverpool was a step-up from last year’s  kiss-me-quick Bournemouth. Here, sand in the toes and jugs of cider on a hilly beachfront was replaced by granite skies and city centre hotels where policy – serious stuff – could be forged.

Here, it could be forgotten that the Lib Dems actually won fewer seats at the Clegg­mania General Election, because, look over there: that’s Vince Cable – his worried frown is part of the government now. See that Lynne Feather­stone – bit mad­cap – she’s a minister now. And the tall ginger one, who you wouldn’t have clocked twice on the Tube six months ago, he’s in the new politics too. 

It’s big league stuff, OK, no time for donkey rides. The ones famous enough for Question Time were struggling not to strut round the conference like library monitors who’d somehow been allowed to join the jocks on campus. 

That was made harder by the adulation offered for the Lib Dem heroes that saved Britain in May... or whatever it was the video of Clegg shaking hands and pointing decisively played before his speech on Monday suggested had been achieved.

One Lib Dem Youth member I saw might as well have taken off his coat and covered a puddle for Sarah Teather. Nobody curtsied for Featherstone, but it wouldn’t have been a surprising scene.

The delegates are robots controlled by a back-breaking whip or, hey, they just don’t accept the idea that Clegg risked the future of a party just to get a job worthy of memoirs. 

They think Lib Dems have been under­estimated, and all that talk about how they will never win another election because the party sold its soul may lead to Labour complacency. 

The mood is good. But members aren’t really relishing the prospect of the London mayoral elections in 2012. The question for the local party is whether the pragmatic approach adopted by the hardy and reliable, the card-holders happy to travel to Liverpool and fight one council campaign after another, is translated into loyalty among Camden’s voters. 

The core was out in Liverpool, but only another election, like the one expected to take place in Kentish Town next month, will really test whether broader support bailed out after May.

Limping Dem – A comeback for Scott?

• OUCH! Ralph Scott, the Lib Dem who until being defeated at May’s council elections was high up the ladder as the Town Hall’s finance chief, protests: Don’t take a picture... you’ll only say the Lib Dems are hobbling on despite losing control of Camden. Us? Never. Still, Ralph is vague about his peg-leg appearance at conference this week. His only explanation was that he “fell out of a vet in Dartmouth Park”. Sounds like a shaggy dog story.

• The sad death of Dave Horan will in time lead to a by-election in Ralph’s old ward of Kentish Town. Maybe Ralph will fancy a new campaign, possibly his old running mate Nick Russell likes the idea too. But don’t expect defeated Holborn and St Pancras parliamentary candidate Jo Shaw to step in. Full of beans organising fringe meetings and speaking in debates on human rights this week, Jo insists she doesn’t foresee a future on the council.

• Awkward moments for Camden member Ed Fordham as he chaired Stonewall’s fringe meeting on Monday night. He had to share a panel with the gay rights charity’s chief executive Ben Sum­mer­s­kill. That’s the same Ben Summerskill who Ed Fordham blogged about earlier this year under the title: “I’m no longer prepared to support Stonewall under the leadership of Mr Summerskill”. Fordham had taken umbrage at Summerskill’s interjections on the David Laws resignation story shortly after the coalition was formed. Brian Paddick and Daily Mail journalist Andrew Pierce, who lives in Hampstead, listened in  to the friendly duel at the Tate Liverpool.

• Defection news? Kilburn Labour member Mike Katz was spotted around conference with a yellow ribbon around his neck. No side-switching scoop to report, however.  He was in town “on work” for a public affairs company. 

• Old Tory leader in Camden Piers Wauchope’s book on the history of the borough’s politics, released earlier this year, claimed Lib Dem councillor Jill Fraser’s natural home was the Labour Party. The same claim was made about the Tories’ Lulu Mitchell. Codswallop, says Jill, a fish and chip worker from Gospel Oak. She can after all proudly say she came the closest the Lib Dems ever came to unseating Frank Dobson in 2005 and she is now a committed regular at conference. “Piers is just a snob. He only wrote that because he thinks we don’t talk posh.” No more mushy peas for Wauchope.