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azzuri
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Huhne warns over voting rights change.........see - http://www.theherald.co.uk/politics/56532.html
| Quote: | Huhne warns over voting rights change.........
Contenders to succeed Charles Kennedy as leader of the Liberal Democrats clashed yesterday in Edinburgh over the right of Scottish MPs to vote on English issues and on a timetable for withdrawing troops from Iraq.
The campaign's only Scottish hustings took place as it emerged that Chris Huhne, who has been an MP only since last May, has drawn ahead of Sir Menzies Campbell in support among MSPs.
Whereas the acting leader and North-East Fife MP has majority support in the Westminster party, only four of the 17 LibDem MSPs have backed him, while six are supporting Mr Huhne and two are backing Simon Hughes.
Nicol Stephen and Jim Wallace, the current and past Scottish leaders, are not going to declare support for any of the contenders.
A hustings meeting attended by more than 400 party members at Our Dynamic Earth gave Mr Huhne, the Eastleigh MP, an economist and former journalist, the biggest applause of the afternoon.
Sir Menzies stressed that he has the backing of 60% of all LibDem parliamentarians to have declared their support, including eight of the 12 former Strasbourg colleagues of Mr Huhne, and support from the left to the right wing plus the younger female MPs. He said of the low level of support among MSPs: "There wouldn't be MSPs if people like me hadn't argued the home rule case when it wasn't as fashionable as it is now".
Sir Menzies was alone among the three candidates in arguing against a fixed timetable for withdrawing British troops from Iraqi operations by the end of the year. He put pressure on Mr Huhne over plans to shift tax towards penalising pollution, saying higher petrol tax would be unpopular in rural Scotland.
A televised clash earlier on BBC Scotland saw Mr Hughes seeking to limit the power of Sir Menzies and other Scottish MPs to vote on English-only legislation – a move he has pushed for at least five years and which has become Conservative policy.
Mr Hughes, the MP for Bermondsey in London, said of the imbalance between Scottish and English MPs: "It is best resolved – most cheaply resolved, and with the least complications – if we have MPs with English seats voting on English business.
Sir Menzies wanted a written constitution for the UK that included fairer voting, reform of the Lords, a bill of rights and stronger freedom of information. "We would undoubtedly look at the relationship between Belfast, Cardiff and Edinburgh, and in the course of that inevitably the role of MPs," he said.
Mr Huhne said that the current anomaly should not be replaced by another, and raised the risk of affecting the funding mechanism for Holyrood: "We need a comprehensive constitutional settlement which deals with this issue along with others – and indeed deals with financial issues because a lot of matters that are meant to be only English, if they affect public spending, affect Scotland through the Barnett formula."
Mr Hughes, claiming Scottish family connections to a 19th century advocate, emphasised his ability to win supporters from outside the party, and called for the party to be "the freedom party" on both domestic and foreign policy matters.
Mr Huhne said that under his leadership the LibDems would be not just a party of conscience and reform but "a party of ideas". Foremost among them was his plan to shift the burden of taxation on to polluters. |
Interesting to see that both Hughes and Huhne support a solution to the West Lothian question. I think Campbell may be right in what he says about taxing fuel upon usage - this will not be popular at all in the Highlands and Islands where the Lib Dems traditionally do well.
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SLG
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To cut car emmissions and to raise money to combat their effects, raising the tax on fuel makes sense. However, surely this could be zoned so as not to penalise the rural areas where there is little public transport.
I think both Huhne and Hughes would give the consitutional issue quite a high profile. Whereas Campbell, like almost all of his fellow Scots Unionist MPs, would like to ignore it, leaving it up to a full constitutional review that will never happen.
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