Update: We’ve closed comments on this post as the Interview is now finished. See Nick’s Twitter stream for further responses to questions and this post for an account of how the event worked.
Video Feed
If you’ve got a question for Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg then now’s your chance: on Monday July 13th (1200 GMT). he’ll be joining the Reuters UK team to take your questions live. And no subject is off limits.
You’ll be able to see the live videostream here and you can ask questions ahead of the event or respond during it by using Twitter (#askclegg) the 12 Seconds video service (nickclegg) or use this post’s comment form below. (We’ll also feature the highlights on the reuters uk news twitterstream.) Nick introduces the event below and, to kick off the discussion, asks a couple of questions of his own.
On Monday we can change the way we do politics. Every week I travel around the country to meet people in their local town halls and listen to their views. Anyone can come along and ask me (just about) anything and in return I get a pretty good picture of how people across the UK feel about politics and how they are being affected by the recession.
Next week I am going to do another of my public Q&A meetings, but this time it is going to be live and online so that you can ask me your questions from home, your work or wherever you happen to be online. There will be no script and no special invitations – just get in touch and ask a question on subjects that concern you.
The one thing that keeps coming up again and again is the state of our politics and how we can clean it up. Many people say they would like to see action taken against MPs who seriously abuse the system. But currently voters have no power to sack those MPs who have been found guilty of serious wrong-doing. I want to change this and make politicians more accountable and politics more transparent. I am keen to hear your ideas.
This has never been done before so, on Monday 13th July post your questions and let’s discuss how we can clean up politics and fix the British economy.
Nick Clegg
This is a great idea, and we should see more of this sort of thing.
2 reforms to the voting system could make our politics much more responsive, and give us much more power:
1) Why not introduce a system of Delegated Voting, whereby MPs' votes in the Commons depend directly on how many people voted for them (votes cast for other parties in that constituency could be distributed to the elected MPs of that party)? In this way, every vote would count directly in the Commons, for every MP and for every party. Votes would matter in safe seats and in marginal seats; Labour votes would count in Tory constituencies, and so would Tory ones, because it would stop being just about who got the seat, and start being about the votes. Why don't you propose such a system, so that in future we can affect politics with our votes even where our MP retains their seat?
2) More ambitiously, could we have continuous voting, where we could change our vote online when we wanted (maybe with a restriction on doing it too often), so that Parliament would gradually change as opinion in the country changed, and MPs and governments would always be at the mercy of the people? Truly unpopular and massively important decisions might not then go through, as they can now.
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173 comments so far
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I am concerned that the negative impact of industrial wind turbines on local communities is not being addressed.
With politicians to date it is ’seen to be green’ politics and a re run of the emperors new clothes…from all parties!
The financial sums involved buys silence, compromises communities and buys political support,yet the UK public and our economy are paying for this. More goes from most communities into the ROC pot that they accrue from community benefit funds.
Democracy is not being best served and prudence and sound engineering are being ignored.
We have finite resources natural and financial…too much time is being spent debating global issues and arguing about our future too hot? too cold?…too many making money out of career environmentalism … it is time we took action and used our all finite resources prudently by taking a large dose of commonsense and put communities first, not relying on vested interests,media and PR hype to plan our future!
In times of the recession it’s difficult for anyone to get a job, but for blind and partially sighted people it’s always the case, with 66% of blind and partially sighted people of working age still out of work.
Given the right opportunities, blind and partially sighted people have always been able to compete in the job market, but the problem is many employers need more information about the abilities of visually impaired people and schemes available to support them, such as the govrenment funded Access to work scheme.
How will a lib dem government look to raise awareness of this scheme to employers?
Do you think that there should be more helicopters and men sent to Afghanistan to shore up the military effort, which many ex-army chiefs have called for? It seems that this is the only way to achieve the objective. Do you think that non-military approaches could work?
Nick, my question is what is your stance on Gay Marriage? Personally I think that civil unions aren’t good enough – it’s hardly fair or equal. The government should be secular on personal matters such as this, and not take sides with the Church of England.
Z
On behalf of some 800,000 Polish voters, scattered in key seats, I would like to ask what the LibDem policy is on the government’s recent decision to retain the Workers’ Registration Scheme.
This demands that Polish workers and other A8 nationals (but NO OTHER EU nationals, Americans, Africans, Maltese etc) pay a huge £90 fee for the privilege of entering a sytem which confers no benefits, and delivers innaccurate statistics because so many evade the scheme; statistics which moreover are put to no discernible use.
Sarah Ludford MEP has called the WRS an expensive, discriminatory farce, which inhibits the free and equal movement of Labour, and should be scrapped. What does the rest of the party think?
Nick
Is politics today less about ideology are more about who can best manage the shop?
In the current coming age of climate change, energy security and public transport will become increasingly important.
These utilities will need to be properly co-ordinated and run for the benefit of the population at large and not for profit.
Some surveys have shown that as many as 75% of the UK population are in favour of rail re-nationalisation.
With these considerations in mind, why is re-nationalisation of utilities and particularly public rail transport not on the LibDem agenda?
So many people don’t vote Lib Dem because they feel we don’t make enough of a difference in Parliament. There have been a few successes recently, but the question is: Do we have a national strategy to take power? (to be the opposition first naturally). I think if the answer were a definitive yes and what that was (in broad terms) then many more people would vote for the Lib Dems.
Dear Nick.
I have a lot of respect for Mark Williams Ceredigion (Wales) Liberal MP, he has been our backbone while fighting against a near by wind development.
My questions to you are as follows…
1. where do you stand regarding Wind dvelopments in the UK?
2. Would you change the policy to make more use of other forms of renewable enrgy?
3. What are your thoughts regarding Nuclear?
4. Would you support local MP’s for being democratic, even if it goes against the Liberal policy?
Mark Williams is one of the MP’s that can see further than his own back pocket, if all MP’s listened to what communities want rather than what Quango’s advise, (which is usually for their own benefit) the political system would be democratic and trustworthy…
At this moment in time, we are living in a dictatorship country and not a democratic one.
Dear Nick.
I have a lot of respect for Mark Williams Ceredigion (Wales) Liberal MP, he has been our backbone while fighting against a near by wind development.
My questions to you are as follows…
1. where do you stand regarding Wind dvelopments in the UK?
2. Would you change the policy to make more use of other forms of renewable enrgy?
3. What are your thoughts regarding Nuclear?
4. Would you support local MP\’s for being democratic, even if it goes against the Liberal policy?
Mark Williams is one of the MP\’s that can see further than his own back pocket, if all MP\’s listened to what communities want rather than what Quango\’s advise, (which is usually for their own benefit) the political system would be democratic and trustworthy…
At this moment in time, we are living in a dictatorship country and not a democratic one.
Mr Clegg,
In the new Equality Bill under 18’s aren’t included, leaving them subject to age discrimination, what are your feelings regarding this?
How will/can the Lib Dems help the youth of soceity?
Because of the need for constant back up by conventional power stations wind turbines save little if any CO2 emissions. The huge subsidies given to international companies encourages them to bully local people into silence with promises of contributions to community funds which are a small fraction of the sums received by them. They also promise jobs which are not realised other than in the construction phase and perhaps two maintenance jobs per ten turbines.
Why are you supporting this discredited method of electricity generation which because of its intermittent nature, threatens the security of the electricity supply and thrusts more people into fuel poverty.
It is a scam and I cannot understand why you are apparently blind to it?
What are the Lib Dems doing to ensure that the government does not sweep claims of torture against suspects such as Binyam Mohamed under the carpet? Surely having the police investigate the little people in this is not good enough and those who ordered this should be held to account, at least if we are going to still choose to call ourself a democracy?
Should the UK take the same approach to drug use as the Portugese have done?
Do you think we need changes to the parliamentary system to avoid having unelected PMs and what appears to be an unelected deputy PM ?
Why all this fuss that a PM shuld be elected,the PM has already been elected as an MP and surely it is up to the party he/she represents to elect who they feel should be leader or PM, was for example Churchill atthe beginning of WW2 elected as PM by public or Harold Macmillan who succeeded Anthony Eden or do we want to adopt the American system of electing a President.God help us!!
I’m thinking beyond the credit crunch and MP’s expenses and the world of Tweeting and looking for the Party to take a unilateral nuclear disarmament stance. We cannot hold the moral high ground against Iran when we continue to hold (and build) nuclear weapons. What’s the point of them? Once anyone starts we’re all finished anyway so words like deterrent are as irrelevant as the weapons.
Let the lib Dems take the lead with a firm promise on neclear disarmament.
I am an Independent Swansea City & County Councillor of 25 years service. I work in partnership with the Liberal Democrats here in a Coalition called “The Swansea Administration” that forms the Ruling Group on this large Welsh Unitary Authority. As a retired Science / Maths Teacher I have for the past seventeen years studied the inadequacy of Wind Turbines. They will never halt Climate Change. All they do is siphon out vast sums of Public Subsidies called Renewable Obligations. People like Ed Milliband MP are in my opinion going to bankrupt our UK Economy by playing silly games with UK Energy Policies. Can you Nick Clegg MP work to counter the mad policies of Ed Milliband MP in Westminster and Jane Davidson AM in Cardiff?
Dear Nick, The government recently stated that they intend to cut down on spending in the public sector. How does this square with the fact that public sector rates of pay increased by 3.6% in the first three months of this year while wage rates in the private sector decreased by 1.9% during the same period? Refer to web page:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/5 314132/Average-wage-falls-for-the-first- time-in-at-least-45-years-but-not-in-pub lic-sector.html
Frank.
[...] Nick visited the headquarters of the Reuters news agency to take part in ‘The Great Debate’, as the first guest to be interviewed live and online using multiple online communications tools, with the questions coming from anyone across the UK. He is also the first leader of a UK political party to take questions from such a broad audience and mix of tools. He was interviewed on the way to the event by Christian Payne (aka Documentally) a blogger and social media expert. For more details of the event: Click Here [...]
To: C J Benjafield
I’ve called for a referendum on the real issue – the UK’s membership of the European Union and I would accept the outcome. But I’d fight for a ‘Yes’ vote – leaving the EU would be very far from cost-free. The EU will be vital if we’re going to tackle climate change, organised crime and the recession. I completely agree the EU needs reform – giving more powers to elected representatives and tackling the injustice of the CAP, for instance – but we need to fight for reform by playing a full role in the EU. We’re stronger together and weaker apart. http://bit.ly/i9aMA and http://bit.ly/SOmrt
[...] Nick visited the headquarters of the Reuters news agency to take part in ‘The Great Debate’, as the first guest to be interviewed live and online using multiple online communications tools, with the questions coming from anyone across the UK. He is also the first leader of a UK political party to take questions from such a broad audience and mix of tools. He was interviewed on the way to the event by Christian Payne (aka Documentally) a blogger and social media expert. For more details of the event: Click Here [...]
I note your comments regarding a referendum on membership of the EU. Why aren’t the Lib Dems doing more to promote a positive image of the EU and its work? At present most of media coverage is negative and it would seem that eurosceptic views are given prominence. There seems to be little coverage of rebuttals to some of the most outrageous and controversial negative statements.