Live chat with Nick Clegg, Tues Dec 11th from 2-3pm

[CarrieMumsnet]

Hi all

Nick Clegg, one of the contenders for the leadership of the Lib Dems, will be answering your questions on Mumsnet on Tues Dec 11th from 2-3pm.

If you can't make Tuesday's chat, please post your advance questions here.

For those of you who haven't perhaps followed Nick's career as closely as you should have, here's a short biog courtesy of his office:

Nick is MP for Sheffield Hallam (majority of 8,682) and the Liberal Democrat Shadow Home Secretary. He was born in 1967 and studied at Cambridge, Minnesota and College D?Europe. He's married to Miriam Gonzalez Durantez and has two young sons. He takes his parenting duties seriously; his working day usually starts by taking his sons to school and when Miriam returned to work after the birth of their first son, Nick stayed at home to look after their child.

Before entering Parliament, Nick worked as a journalist and then as a development aid and trade expert in the European Union, including managing aid projects in the poorest parts of the former Soviet Union and overseeing the EU?s side in negotiations for China and Russia to join the World Trade Organisation.

His political interests include the defence of civil liberties, campaigning against Identity Cards and proposing a Freedom Bill to repeal unnecessary legislation.

See you all for a late-lunch-at-the-computer on the 11th.

[Jojojoy]

It seems like the whole of our social structure is set up to require minimal time to be spent together as a family:
two salaries needed for mortgages in the southeast and increasingly elsewhere meaning primary childcare responsibility passes outside the family. At the same time we see rising concern about the decline of family life, not just in families that are financially worse of but across the board due to being time-poor, affecting children's reading (which is better when reinforced by family time making books fun), social skills (aka respect) etc. What would Nick as LibDem leader do to address this?

[Jojojoy]

Sorry, another question too...
my husband's 2 weeks paternity leave flew by, especially as we were still in hospital for most of it.
Would Nick consider introducing a parental leave system more like those in Scandanavia to allow fathers to really get involved in their children's earliest years?

[Jojojoy]

Final question from me , and it's the Monty Python Romans questions...
As a former MEP and therefore one of the few in Westminster with real inside understanding of Europe, in terms of the family what has the EU ever done for us, and what would you as LibDem leader push for to help further the good bits and avoid the bad bits?

[crossmount]

what do you think about labelling all children's foods with really obvious warnings (like they do on fag packets) about salt and sugar content - or even 'this product contains nothing of nutritional value whatsoever!' I know it might not be very liberal, but I feel we have an uphill struggle to compete against the millions spent on marketing junk food to kids - we are willing to do it to dissaude people from smoking, shouldn't we do it with the very real health concerns associated with life long bad eating habits?

[LittleSleighBellasRinging]

What would the Lib Dems do about the family courts? Currently all decisions about children, child protection, contact issues etc., are made behind closed doors with no accountability and no scrutiny, leading inevitably to miscarriages of justice as in the Sally Clarke and Angela Cannings cases. The excuse is that the confidentiality of the children must come first, but in a democracy, surely the interests of justice must come first? Do the Lib Dems believe that the interests of children can be balanced with the interests of justice and if so, how would they do it?

[CarrieMumsnet]

bump

[UnquietDad]

Nick
a) If you become Lib Dem leader - in the event of a hung parliament, with which party would you first attempt to broker a deal?
b) Where do the Lib Dems stand on school league tables? (I think S10 and S11, for example, have become overpriced, middle-class ghettoes, largely thanks to parental fears being stoked and exploited by school paranoia, and that this will never change back now - moreover I think a lot of people are quite happy for it not to change...)

Sorry for sneaking in two questions!

[FlamesparodyOfAChristmasName]

Crammin em in this week aren't we?

Erm, I should probably ask a question rather than just making random comments

Ooh, silly not to go for the nappies - Is anything going to be done to get greater cloth nappy promotion across the board rather than this hit n miss council lottery system? Some offer lots of incentives and information, others (like mine) do hardly anything. With the worry about carbon footprints, landfill and whatnot what is needed is more information and support for cloth nappies (and an unflawed survey!!!)

[Blandmum]

Forced inclusion, coupled with the closure of special schools is denying choice to parents of children with serious SEN.

This often adversely affects the education of that child, and the other children in the class.

What are the Lib Dems going to do about Inclusion, given that Baroness Warnock has said that , with the possible exception of children with dyslexia, inclusion as a concept has failed?

Second question
What do you intend to do to improve the behaviour of children in schools? Would you see the return of more EBD schools, with trained staff and appropriate pupil/ teacher ratios.

Third question

What is you favorite flavour of Fruitshoot (trick question!)

[Monkeytrousers]

Oh, I will post a question as soon as Dp comes in and I get 5 minutes!! That's a hint!

[Monkeytrousers]

Isn't it about time we made the family the centre of our society? Not the male, not the female, but the child? It is all well and good trying to get mothers back into the work place but trying to shoehorn women into unfamily friendly, and more often, family hostile workplace environments, will only make life less secure for a lot of children, with regards to the stress it places their parents under.

This does not mean harking back to the Conservative idea of family values, which isolates women in the domestic sphere, not valued and with no official status, nor does it mean expecting women to become pseudo-males, and having to forsake their mothering instincts to succeed by the male model, both of which models place the family unit under terrible strain (and which is one perspective that is always ignored in official investigations of the rising divorce rate).

There is an unchartered political middle ground to be explored here (surely LD territory?), and though I understand that pioneering policies are a risky enterprise for any politician with a necessary eye on short-term elective strategies, these are not completely untested and there is a huge amount of discussion this within academia about this at the moment.

My point is, the current system pits couples against one another (especially those from lower and lower middle incomes), in issues such as childcare and positive work/life balance and at best offer strained compromises rather than positive choices; as well as encouraging competitiveness in the marketplace, which is good, it also encourages competitiveness in the home, where co-operation needs to be the major dynamic. Dr Helena Cronin effectively says that co-operation and competitiveness are two sides of the same coin, but that the two must be in balance. In terms of the family and a mother?s status in our society, this is way out of synch and I would like to see this addressed, not simply for the benefit of women, but their children and men folk too.

What is the LD thinking on this issue?

I would also like a job if there is one going (part time with flexi hours)

(please keep that last bit in please MN towers ? I can but dream of getting a good job somewhere )

[nettie]

Sort of along the same lines as Monkeytrousers, so called family friendly policies just cause resentment within the work place from those who do have families but not children. Policies based on creating a good work/life balance for people would seem a better approach. Would Mr Clegg agree or disagree with this?

[JustineMumsnet]

Hi Nick,
Many thanks for coming on to answer our questions - can you explain why Chris Huhne calls you Calamity Clegg?

[Blandmum]

Am confused.

Is today Tuesday????

Is he doing the online chat today?

[JustineMumsnet]

No sorry - but out at school concert on tues - so thought I'd get an advance question in - this is the advance question thread!

[Blandmum]

It was the way you said 'Hi Nick'. It unnerved me!

[Blandmum]

Other questions I would like answered

'Do you know where dd has left her music folder, and where ds has left his new duffle coat?'

Answer that and I'll canvas for the Lib Dems

[SenoraPostrophe]

I agree with many of the points posted by unquietdad, martianbishop and monkeytrousers. if there isn´t enough time, then I vote for answers to their questions please.

if there is enough time, then this:

increasingly over the last 2 years, we´ve only heard from the lib dems when they want to slag off the government, even when the anti-government argument is not a natural lib dem one. I don´t remember having seen a single news story about the lib dems´ policies in a long time. In your view, is that because the media are biased against you, or because the Lib Dems have failed to come up with any coherent plans of their own in the last 2 years?

[LittleSleighBellasRinging]

Another vote for the work life balance question as well.

And another question: Do the Lib Dems agree with the proposed new database where all children born in the UK, will have their details on it? If so, are you all going to put your children's details on it? Or are you going to use the MP's and famous people's opt out? If it's not good enough for MP's children, why is it good enough for ours?

(OK so there are 4 question marks there, but it's sort of one ranting question!)

[Swedes2Turnips1]

Is it not dishonest to the electorate to insist your party is currently a contender to govern in any capacity other than providing the balance of power in a hung Parliament? People have lost interest in dishonest answers.

[SenoraPostrophe]

but dishonesty is pretending to the electorate that, for example, your party would deport all illeagl immigrants in 5 minutes isn´t it? whether or not a party can really be voted in is up to the voters.

[edam]

I'd like to know what Nick Clegg's position is on civil liberties. The government has been busy passing law after law redrawing the relationship between citizen (subject) and state, all of them in one direction - more power for the state. At one end of the spectrum, preventing demonstrations near to Parliament, at the other, detention without trial.

Would the Lib Dems uphold civil liberties and start repealing repressive laws? Would they ensure anti-terror legislation is only used in cases of terrorism and not against peaceful protests or people heckling MPs?

And following the Child Benefit debacle, would the Lib Dems abandon massive IT databases such as the NHS Spine, the largest civilian IT project in Europe?

[Blandmum]

Does it worry you that your thread is half as popular as Tanya Burton's and the one about Kinky sex????

What do you think this tells you about the attitude to politics in the UK?

[DreamTiger]

You have two young sons - what are you most worried about for their future?

[UnquietDad]

We should have had Chris Huhne on as well and seen who got more questions! (I don't think anyome could compete with Tanya Byron and kinky sex.)