FactCheck: Clegg's conference claims 2009
Updated on 23 September 2009
Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg closed his party's conference with a keynote speech promising change - but how did the facts stack up?
The claim
"Labour is dying on its feet. We are replacing them as the dominant force of progressive politics."
Nick Clegg, Liberal Democrat leader, speech to annual conference
The analysis
Over to the polls. Hard to argue with the first bit, but even harder to find hard evidence that the Lib Dems are picking up popular support.
We took an average of 25 recent polls conducted over the past three months (as handily listed on UK Polling Report) - this gives the Lib Dems an average rating of just 18.5 per cent, with only two surveys putting them above 20 points.
Compare that to their last pre-election performance: an average of 17 polls conducted between 13 June and 23 September 2004 put them on 23 points, with only one result below 20 points.
The sources
UK Polling Report
The claim
"Paddy Ashdown, the first person to put climate change on the national agenda."
Nick Clegg, Liberal Democrat leader, speech to annual conference
The analysis
Really? It's news to us, and also news to Friends of the Earth, which organised the first national campaign on climate change at the end of the Eighties.
"If Paddy Ashdown played a part then great, but I don't remember him particularly putting it on the agenda," said a spokesperson who also worked on the campaign back in the day.
Ashdown's name is also strangely absent from a list of the 100 people who did the most to save the planet, compiled by a panel of experts in 2006.
When he became Lib Dem leader in 1988, then-PM Margaret Thatcher was far from silent on the environment; for example, expressing her concern about climate change in a keynote speech to the Royal Society in 1988.
At time of writing, the Lib Dems had yet to tell us what was behind Clegg's claim, though if they shed any light on Paddy's agenda-setting environmental history, we'll update this page.
UPDATE: The Lib Dems later contacted us with a couple of examples from years gone by, including a keynote speech in Truro on 29 June 1988 (three months before Thatcher's Royal Society speech).
"Only this week, United States scientists were testifying to a committee of the Senate about the so-called 'greenhouse effect', which they say is raising the average temperature of the world," he said.
"It cannot wait - our party must put this issue on the agenda of British and European politics and it must do so now. We should force it into public debate and work for the international action that is needed in order to face it."
The sources:
Guardian: Earthshakers - the top 100 green campaigners of all time
Margaret Thatcher Foundation
The claim
"Labour and the Conservatives have betrayed [people who are crying out for something different at Westminster after the expenses scandal]. They offered warm rhetoric about change when the scandal was at its height. And then did nothing."
Nick Clegg, Liberal Democrat leader, speech to annual conference
The analysis
Patience, patience. Parliament is currently in recess (still), and both Gordon Brown and David Cameron have said they'll accept the recommendations of Committee on Standards in Public Life Christopher Kelly's review of MPs' expenses, due next month.
It's true that the Lib Dems have come out of the expenses scandal fairly clean - Clegg's MPs didn't attract the kind of duckhouse-buying, house-flipping, tax-avoiding headlines that dogged both Labour and the Tories. Clegg also made headlines of his own by calling for a 100-day plan of reform before parliament rose for the summer, including giving people the right to sack their MP.
It's still a bit of push to say the other main parties have done nothing - Labour's "star chamber" punished MPs it found to have been on the fiddle, most notably barring Ian Gibson from standing as a Labour MP again (admittedly, perhaps not the kind of change Clegg was looking for).
The Tories also set up a scrutiny committee to rake through its MPs' claims; Cameron announced at the end of June that 100 MPs (nearly half) would be paying back £250,000 - worth of taxpayers' cash and has also tightened up rules for Conservative claimants in future, with the shadow cabinet's expense claims now published online.
The sources
Conservatives - action on expenses
The claim
"Cancelling ID cards to help fund 10,000 more police on the streets."
Nick Clegg, Liberal Democrat leader, speech to annual conference
The analysis
Estimates vary as to how much money would actually be saved by scrapping ID cards - the government argues that the real cost is in the database, also used for biometric passports. We'll look at this in more detail in the future.
The claim
"Total national debt could hit £1.2tr next year - £20,000 for every man, woman and child."
Nick Clegg, Liberal Democrat leader, speech to annual conference
The analysis
Debt is rocketing - no denying that. And although technically you can break it down to a per-person total, it's not the most representative way to think of the money owed.
A large proportion of the government's tax take comes from businesses - highlighting the proportion for each person (whether they be man, woman, or even child) isn't wrong, though perhaps it paints a more painful picture than will actually be the case when it comes to getting back into the black.
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