While there has been some abuse of one person company status, Labour's IR35 tax regulation now covers hundreds of thousands of genuine contractors who have one person company status because their customers do not wish to employ them on a long term basis. This is either because their industry requires flexible working on a variety of projects (e.g. the IT industry), or because they have made a conscious life-style choice to be self employed rather than employed.
Repealing the regulation without replacing it will just return us to the unsatisfactory position in existence before IR35 where some people were using one person company status as a means of tax avoidance. There will need to be a replacement. That is why the Lib Dems support targeted legislation to cut this kind of abuse along the lines suggested by the Personal Contractors Group.
I do not support euthanasia. I do not believe that anyone should ever kill another person unless it is unavoidable to defend the lives of themselves or others.
As far as embryo experimentation is concerned, the regulations are already tight and I don't believe there is any case for loosening them. It should only be allowed to increase understanding about human disease and treatments. There should be very tight time limits (I believe it is currently 14 days). It should only be allowed if there is no other way of doing the research and no alternative method available (such as taking stem cells from bone marrow). The individuals who provide the egg and sperm should always give consent. The research should be licensed and monitored and if it is not producing results, it should be closed down. Reproductive cloning should remain a criminal offence.
PS: This answer was drafted before Ms Ng announced her candidature for Parliament as a Pro-Life candidate.
That said, we need to be sensitive to Russian concerns, and I would support an extension of NATO's current 'three nos' policy to the Baltics ("no intention, no plan, no reason to station either nuclear or conventional forces on the soil of new member States").
The critical thing is that the countries meet NATO's membership criteria as laid out in their "Study on NATO enlargement" published in September 1995. This will require the improvement of minority rights for their Russian-speaking minorities.
I also strongly support their accession to the EU. Their security is more likely in an environment of growth, economic progress, minority rights and the rule of law and these are all areas in the acquis that all three, as candidates for accession to the European Union, are committed to building and are taking steps to achieve.
As part of this commitment we believe in the creation of a scheme for the civil registration of partnerships. This would give two unrelated adults who wish to register a personal relationship, legal rights, such as a next of kin arrangements which are at present only available to married couples.
I believe that gay couples should be treated in the same way as heterosexual couples when it comes to immigration.
In terms of adoption and fostering, I believe this should be possible subject to the same careful screening, interviewing and background checks that a heterosexual couple would face before being allowed to adopt or foster.
In terms of priority, these are manifesto commitments and the party wants to see these changes to the law implemented within the period of the next Government.
Public sector pay is a major issue, especially in London, where London weighting has not kept pace with the cost of living for almost all public sector workers including the Police, Nurses, School Teachers and, as you point out, University Teachers. As a result, Londoners are seeing shortfalls in many areas of public service. Even when enough positions are theoretically funded by the Government, pay levels are often too low to compete with the private sector and attract enough people to fill the vacancies.
Yes to trebling investment in buses. Liberal Democrat policy would lead to at least trebling investment in buses nationally. Locally, the priority for transport investment should be fixing the tube (especially the District line and stopping the Piccadilly line at Turnham Green), installing an interchange at White City and installing a tram line along the Uxbridge Road. There is an opportunity to improve bus services, but trebling expenditure would be overkill.
The system that does this best is the Single Transferable Vote as used in the Northern Ireland Assembly, the Republic of Ireland and parts of the USA and Australia. I would also like to see this introduced for Westminster and for local government in England, Wales and Scotland on the earliest possible timing.
Other systems which would be an improvement vs. where we are today are the Additional Member System of voting as used for the Scottish Parliament and in Germany. Also the Jenkins Report proposal of AV+. I would support a referendum on the Jenkins Report as a first step towards achieving STV for Westminster.
Not all PR systems are better than our current voting system. There are other proportional voting systems, so-called 'party list' systems that I would oppose because I believe they are worse than our current system. These include the national list system used in Israel - or the regional list systems used in Austria and many other European countries.
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