Build Back Better Britain After Coronavirus: Policy Ideas for Liberal Democrats
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Build back better Britain after coronavirus: policy ideas for Liberal Democrats Edited by Layla Moran MP Build back better Britain after coronavirus: policy ideas for Liberal Democrats Published in 2020 by Neil Fawcett on behalf of Layla Moran MP C5 Grange Court Business Park, Barton Lane, Abingdon, OX14 3NB Designed and typeset in Freight Sans Pro and Calluna by Richard Rowley and Duncan Brack All contributors have written their pieces in their own individual capacity. Their inclusion in this booklet should not be taken to mean either that they agree with every proposal in it or that they are supporting Layla Moran’s candidacy for the Liberal Democrat leadership. PDF available for download from www.LaylaMoran.com/Build_Back_Better ii Contents Build back better ii Foreword v Layla Moran 1 Introduction 1 Layla Moran 2 Economic policy and the state 4 David Howarth 3 Economics and industry 10 Duncan Brack, Josh Babarinde, Vince Cable, Helen Cross, Alyssa Gilbert, Cara Jenkinson, Jannah Patchay, Sheila Ritchie Introduction 10 Industrial strategy and Liberalism 11 Recovery rewards: locking social innovation into Economy 2.0 14 Community-based prosperity 15 Modernising financial markets 17 Climate policy after coronavirus 19 Oil and gas 23 4 Equalities 26 Paul Noblet, Helen Belcher, Tara Copeland, Ade Fatukasi, Lynne Featherstone, Jannah Patchay, Rhys Taylor A more equal country 26 A new social contract 27 Time for a universal basic income 29 A natural home for BAME voters 31 A double burden 33 Childcare and opportunity 34 Dignity not discrimination 35 5 Environment 38 Duncan Brack, Richard Hebditch Environmental policy after coronavirus 38 Protecting the global environment 39 Protecting the UK environment 41 Food, diet and agriculture 43 Putting environment at the heart of government 45 6 Health, wellbeing and social care 48 Mohsin Khan, Humaira Ali, Cara Jenkinson, Tamora Langley, Anisur Rahman Introduction 48 Valuing staff, telemedicine, addressing the backlog 49 Letting go of local hospitals 50 Redesigning where we heal, live and work 53 Aligning health and climate policy objectives 54 Time to be loud and clear on social care 56 When there is no social care set up – dial 999 57 iii 7 Education 59 Layla Moran, Humaira Ali, John Howson, Mathew Hulbert, Jo Owen Enabling the next generation to be world ready, not just exam ready 59 Resilience and education 64 Teaching staff and coronavirus 65 Making change that sticks 66 Young people 67 8 Digital technology 69 Julian Huppert, Humaira Ali, Richard Allan, Tim Clement-Jones, Ian Kearns, William Wallace A Liberal vision for digital technology 69 Committee of the Future 70 Digital communications 71 Sensing the way forwards 71 Accessing services in a digital age 72 Envisioning digital communities 73 Building a fair digital economy 74 Data, algorithms, ethics 76 Government data 77 A Digital Bill of Rights 78 Tackling fake news 79 9 Community 80 David Boyle, Keith House, Brian Paddick, Shelia Ritchie, Emily Smith Power to people 80 Trusting councils, trusting communities 86 The problem with housing 88 The High Street post coronavirus 90 What coronavirus has taught us about policing 91 10 International relations 94 Christine Cheng, Martin Horwood, Peter Frankopan, Whit Mason, Fionna Tod, Irina von Wiese A liberal voice in a changed world 94 The new order 95 Breaking the cycle of neglect in global health 97 Embracing and confronting China 98 Development will be tougher than ever, but change is possible 101 The pandemic and human rights 103 The UK needs to reimagine influence 105 11 Politics 108 Layla Moran, Duncan Brack, Mike Smithson What the party needs to do 108 Cooperating without pacts: the Ashdown – Blair ‘project’ 114 Polling and prospects 116 Contributors 118 iv Foreword Layla Moran The assertion that ‘Britain is at a crossroads’ is one of the most tenacious clichés of modern politics. Scarcely an election – in recent times, even a year – passes without us being told that our choices will set the country’s course for decades to come. The financial crash of 2008, the coalition, the EU referendum – all significant, all noteworthy, and in the case of Brexit, incomplete. Yet all pale into insignificance when compared to the coronavirus crisis and its impacts. These pose both a threat and an opportunity for our party, the country and indeed, the world. The coronavirus pandemic has affected our lives like no crisis since the Second World War. The future role of the state, international trade, the links between private business and the public realm, global governance over problems that defy purely national solutions – all require new thinking and new approaches. And these challenges have come on top of existing emergencies, including climate change, the destruction of the natural environment and the floods of refugees fleeing from war and poverty. The democratic vision and humane values of Liberalism – promoting individual liberty and global justice, reconciling freedom and fairness, dispersing significant concentrations of wealth and power – are needed as never before. With great need comes great opportunity. In normal times, an appetite for improvement is often balanced by a fear of change. Voters’ caution is a sentiment that we politicians ignore at our peril. That’s where we must start. We recognise that people are scared. Their lives and their livelihoods have never felt more fragile. They seek certainty, steadiness and answers. But – and this is the truly exciting part – people are also beginning to see the opportunity for a transformation of the world as we know it. And therein lies the opportunity for the Liberal Democrats. How do we seize this moment and respond in a way that both reassures the British people, amid the pain that will undoubtedly continue, and drives a new Liberal settlement at the end of it? That is the purpose behind this booklet, which contains contributions from forty Liberal Democrat party members and sympathisers. I asked them to consider what party policy should be for Britain after coronavirus – whether the changed political and economic circumstances require new policy prescriptions, or whether they reinforce and highlight the case for our existing proposals. You can decide for yourself whether you think they met the challenge – but whether they did or not, I hope they stimulate you to think about new ideas and new approaches. Because we Liberal Democrats are the party of ideas or we are nothing. ~ I must emphasise that this booklet does not form part of my candidacy for the Liberal Democrat leadership. When I first decided to ask friends and colleagues whether they would be prepared to contribute to it, the leadership election was scheduled to kick off in May 2021. After it was brought forward to the summer of this year, we decided to accelerate the booklet’s production in order to be able to contribute to the policy debate within the party as the country emerges from lockdown. v Neither is this a manifesto – there are important topics that are not discussed here – but we have tried to cover the main areas of policy where we think the party would benefit from looking again at existing policies in the light of the pandemic and its impacts. All contributors have written their pieces in their own individual capacity. Their inclusion in this booklet should not be taken to mean either that they agree with every proposal in it – I’m not sure I do! – or that they are supporting me for the leadership. I want to put on record my warmest thanks to them all for their hard work over a very short period, and particularly to the lead authors for each chapter – David Boyle, Duncan Brack, Christine Cheng, Martin Horwood, David Howarth, Julian Huppert, Mohsin Khan and Paul Noblet – who coordinated the input from their colleagues and pulled the chapters together. My thanks also to those contributors who had to remain anonymous for professional reasons, to Richard Rowley for the design and, especially, to my editorial team of Duncan Brack and Gareth Lewis Shelton, who liaised with contributors and processed and edited their contributions; without them this booklet would not have happened. Layla Moran MP June 2020 vi 1 Introduction Layla Moran The world is facing the greatest economic, political and social upheaval in peacetime. It is seeing the greatest depression in possibly 300 years. There has not been such a sea change in the way people live in much of the world since the Second World War. Much of what we took for normal in February 2020 is gone. Much of it will never come back. Many of the changes that we will see are simply adjustments that were going to come in time. These have been accelerated and concertinaed from a ten-year period to ten weeks. Others are changes and challenges that will be entirely new in the making. If these are managed well, they could lead to the emergence of a better, cleaner, tolerant, happier and more equitable world. Left to their own devices, they could lead to a more divided, polluted, angrier and selfish world. Out of the ashes of World War II came the NHS and Beveridge’s five pillars of welfare. It produced the United Nations, the Marshall Aid plan, the end of colonialism and the European Steel and Coal Community – the precursor to today’s European Union. But it also led to the Cold War, the never- ending Middle East crisis, the nuclear arms race, the division of Germany and the still-divided Korea of today. As Sun Tzu wrote in The Art of War, ‘In the midst of chaos, there is also opportunity’. That applies to a post-coronavirus world as much as anywhere else. Just last year, politicians mocked anything that was slightly out of the ordinary.