FactCheck: Campbell's keynote

Last Modified: 21 Sep 2007
By: Channel 4 News

How does Menzies Campbell's conference speech shape up under the FactCheck microscope?

This was a high-stakes speech for Sir Menzies Campbell. His party is languishing in the polls, and the by-election breakthroughs have been elusive.

Ming has been attacked for lacking impact; could this speech help to turn things round?

Thats for you to decide, but at least we can tell you if he got his facts right. So here it is, the first FactCheck speech run-down of 2007. From poverty and inequality to Star Trek and the Noose, it's all here. Did Ming ring true?

"What kind of country is it where the government responds to the threat of climate change by allowing green taxes to fall as carbon emissions rise?"

Green taxes have actually risen slightly since 1997, though they have fallen as a proportion of total taxation, just dipping below eight per cent last year.

This is largely accounted for by fuel duty, which makes up the vast bulk of green tax revenue. The government ramped up fuel duty in its first years in office, until petrol protests in 2000 made it politically impossible to do so any further.

One of the problems with green taxes is that they tend to hit the poor harder than the rich. A car-dependent country dweller on the minimum wage would be hit far harder by a petrol tax than a footballer with a garage full of 4x4s - as a percentage of their income.

So there is a necessary conflict between both the Lib Dems' and Labour's desires to tax pollution, and their desire to close the wealth gap and enrich the poor.

Source
The IFS Green Budget

"What kind of country is it where the richest in the land pay a lower rate of tax than the people who have to clean their offices?"

This remark has been made many times, and it's not an entirely convincing criticism. It's based on Office of National Statistics figures, which compare the richest 20 per cent of the population to the poorest 20 per cent.

The poorest 20 per cent paid 36.4 per cent of their income in tax in 2005-6, while the richest paid 35.5 per cent.

But if you include benefits in kind (eg. free education and healthcare) in the calculation, the picture looks very different: the poor pay 22.5 per cent of their income in tax, and the richest pay 33.7 per cent.

If you're going to attack Labour for their record on this, it makes sense to compare with the position when they look power. In 1997-8 the poorest 20 per cent paid 37.8 per cent of their income (excluding benefits in kind).

So their position has got appreciably better; they are paying less of their income in tax than they were when Labour took power.

The richest 20 per cent, on the other hand, paid 35.3 per cent of their income in tax in 1997-8; now they pay slightly more. So Labour has improved tax inequality according to this measure.

This is a broad brush approach to estimating who pays tax. The very poorest pay no direct tax, of course, but there are some super-rich who take advantage of the tax system to pay very low tax rates - including a few high-profile hedge fund managers.

Sources
The effects of taxes and benefits on household income, 2005-06, Office of National Statistics (pdf)
The effects of taxes and benefits on household income, 1997-98, Office of National Statistics (pdf)

"What kind of country is it where the government colludes with the Tories to exempt MPs from freedom of information?"

The Liberals didn't exactly move heaven and earth to oppose this when it went through the Commons. Only 11 of their MPs turned out to oppose this bill when it was debated in May, and Ming Campbell was not one of them.

Source
Voting record on PublicWhip.org

"In England, Wales and Scotland, the Liberal Democrats are leading the fight against climate change. Last week the Green Alliance rated our environmental policies top of all the major parties - just as Friends of the Earth did in the recent Scottish election campaign. And on both occasions the Conservatives scored zero.

"Only we have the honesty to propose raising tax on pollution in order to cut tax on income. Only we have the foresight to map out the route to a zero carbon Britain. Only we have the vision to insist on British leadership in the international effort to tackle climate change."

Ming's boasting about the Lib Dems' scorecard in a recent party comparison by an association of nine leading green groups. As FactCheck found, he's on pretty solid green ground; the party's green credentials outshone those of Labour and the Tories.

Interesting, then, that Sir Menzies singles out the Lib Dems' international vision for further preening in today's speech.

The party's proposals for international action on climate change were given only the middle-ranking amber light and the report found that the keystone of their approach was "unlikely to be successful".

Pretty damning and, in comparison, Labour was given a green light with praise for "leading the international debate on climate change".

All the more impressive given that, unlike the Lib Dems, the government is judged on the delivery of results, rather than promises.

As the report said: "We acknowledge that the much lower prospect of a Liberal Democrat government provides them with greater freedom to develop policy commitments."

This doesn't detract from the fact that the Lib Dems' green policies scored well overall, although the Green Alliance called for all the parties to improve their efforts.

Sources
FactCheck: Lib Dems radically green?
Vote blue, go green? Er, not yet.
How Green are our parties? Green Alliance et al, (pdf)

"And you proved it this year too when so many of you came from across the country to campaign in Ealing Southall and Sedgefield.

"In both contests your hard work and commitment ensured that the Liberal Democrats emerged as the principal challengers to the government. And the Conservatives - David Cameron's Conservatives - were pushed into third place."

"Pushed" suggests that the Conservatives were previously in second place. Not so. In Southall in 2005, the Tories were third, with 21.6 per cent of the vote.

In the 2007 by-election to which Ming refers, they came third again. The candidate, running under the label "David Cameron's Conservatives", managed a slight increase in their vote share, to 22.5 per cent.

The Lib Dems did slightly better, boosting their share from 24.4 to 27.6 per cent; but Labour held on to retain the seat.

"... Not to mention the record for which you - and you alone - were responsible as Chancellor. A smash and grab raid on private pensions."

This massively overstates the effect of Gordon's supposed "raid" on pensions. In 1997 Brown did abolish a tax measure which had the effect of taxing around £5.4bn out of pension funds by 1999-2000, the last fiscal year for which it was calculated.

This is not a great sum relative to overall pension savings, and it was partially offset with a cut in corporation tax. In any case, no other party has pledged to reverse this supposed "raid" by reinstating the Advance Capital Tax that Brown abolished.

Source
Channel 4 Factcheck on Brown's pension raid

... The Redwood Commission. Would you believe it? Advice from the Vulcan First Lieutentant. Ideas straight from the bridge of the Starship Free Enterprise. Policies, Dave - but not as we know them."

John Redwood, the Senior Tory Right-winger of famed intelligence and slightly elfin appearance is often mocked for his resemblance to Star Trek's Doctor Spock.

Since we've sunk to the level of Star Trek jokes, we should point out that Spock was never a First Lieutentant in Star Trek. He was Lieutenant Commander, First Officer and Science Officer, then Commander, and became a Captain on Star Date 2277 (according to his Biography on Startrek.com).

There must by a Trekkie on Ming's staff, as the preview copy provided to journalists describes him correctly as First Officer. The error must have crept in subsequently. Suspicion points to the Klingons.

"When they meet a hoodie, they don't know whether to hug 'em - or hang 'em."

David Cameron never actually uttered the line "Hug a hoodie". In the famous "Hug a hoodie" speech he said "For some, the hoodie represents all that's wrong about youth culture in Britain today," and went on to say later that "We have to show a lot more love".

As for hanging, The Lib Dems may have got advance notice of a surprising new policy in the works, but the Conservative Party does not currently advocate the return of the Newgate Hornpipe, for hoodie wearers or anyone else.

Source
The so-called "Hug a Hoodie" speech

"You can't be a part-time Liberal."

No, of course not. That's why several prominent Liberal Democrats are spending some of their time in advisory capacities for ... boo ... a Labour government.

As well as one of the best known Lib Dems, Shirley Williams, Anthony Lester, former party chairman Matthew Taylor, and volunteering-champion Baroness Neuberger have lined up for advisory duties since Gordon Brown became prime minister.

Although Ming Campbell officially welcomed their roles, the appointments ruffled Lib Dem feathers, with Chris Huhne dismissing the advisers this week as not at the "cutting edge of their party's presentation".

"Who'd have thought it, that after a decade of Labour government - a Labour government - the gap between rich and poor in this country would be wider than it was when Labour came to office?"

Ming's right, based on the most common measure of inequality, the Gini coefficient, which takes into account incomes across the whole population.

An increase in income inequality is a common trend in a country on the up, as Britain has been in recent years. Incomes rise above the rate of inflation, meaning those at the top cash in. Benefits, however, rise at a lower rate, so the income gap widens.

The increasing affluence of the super-rich does have some impact on the lives of the poorest, even as they themselves get richer.

"Studies have shown it does lead to more crime, more stress and bad health," says Mike Brewer of the Institute for Fiscal Studies.

Rather than address incomes inequality, Labour has set great store - and spent great amounts of money - on tackling poverty.

Relative poverty - the difference between those at the very bottom with those in the middle of the income distribution - has, despite a small recent rise, fallen since the party came to office.

Its tax and benefit reforms have favoured low-income households - according to the IFS, without these, the rise in inequality since 1996-97 would have been much greater.

And on one measure of inequality, the 90/10 split, which looks at the difference between the 90th and 10th percentile of the population (so leaving off those the very top and the very bottom), things have improved under Labour.

The Lib Dems, however, want to go to war on this gap between the richest and the poorest, talked about hammering the super-rich and redistributing wealth. It's arguable which is the more laudable - or electable - aim.

Source
Poverty and Inequality in the UK: 2007, Institute for Fiscal Studies

"Who'd have thought that after a decade of Labour government social mobility would be in decline?"

A large amount of nonsense is talked about social mobility. If Britain is to be a just and equal society, then everyone should have the same chance to get ahead and achieve prosperity, regardless of who their parents were.

Social mobility is a measure of how likely people born to poor parents are to escape poverty themselves.

The trouble with measuring social mobility is that it takes years to show up. You if you want to measure how well people born to poor parents are faring when they reach 18, you have to wait eighteen years to get your results.

So studies published recently that suggest that social mobility is falling are really revealing the results of policies from the Thatcher era, which do suggest a fall in social mobility.

To get the full results of how Blair and Brown have affected social mobility in Britain, we probably will have to wait until both of them have retired.

David Cameron made some similar claims about social mobility in January - and the analysis is just as relevant to Ming.

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