Lib Dem Leader and Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg has outlined a £1 billion pound Youth Contract to tackle youth unemployment. The aim is to ensure that all jobless young people are earning or learning again before long-term damage is done.

• Over three years, the Youth Contract will provide at least 410,000 new work places for 18 to 24 year olds into work. Starting April 2012
• Including 160,000 wage subsidies and 250,000 new work experience placements.
• In addition, there will be at least 20,000 more incentive payments to encourage employers to take on young apprentices.
• A new programme to help the most disengaged 16 and 17 year olds – getting them back to school or college, onto an apprenticeship or into a job with training.

Deputy Prime Minister addresses the Party Conference in Birmingham. You can read the full text of the speech here.

Thousands of Liberal Democrats gathered for their annual conference in Birmingham this week. They discussed what has been achieved in the first 500 days of Government and policies for the future. Highlights include:

• After decades of campaigning, and thanks to Lynne Featherstone: Equal marriage, straight or gay.
• More power for consumers over the energy companies
• Calling time on rewards for failure in boardrooms
• New powers to turn empty homes back into family homes.
• A £500m investment in growth.

The Lib Dems are opposing calls for an immediate cut in the 50% tax rate paid by higher rate taxpayers.

Nick Clegg’s party instead wants to give more help to those on middle and low incomes who need it the most.

NIck Clegg: We need fairer taxes to help ordinary people, not tax cuts for the richest

Lib Dem Chief Secretary to the Treasury Danny Alexander said, “At a time when the whole country faces serious financial challenges, the priority needs to be people on low and middle incomes.”

A key part of the coalition agreement was the Lib Dem commitment to making taxes fairer. The Lib Dems are well on their way to delivering on their pledge that no one should pay tax on the first £10,000 they earn.

Nearly a million low paid workers are no longer paying income tax thanks to this. All basic rate tax payers are paying £200 less in income tax.

Each year more and more people on low and middle incomes will gain more thanks to the Lib Dem fairer tax plan.

Danny Alexander said, “Fairer taxes is our goal. I don’t see why, in the next parliament, we shouldn’t be trying to get to a situation where people in a full-time job on the minimum wage are paying no income tax at all.”

This would mean that no one would pay tax on the first £12,500 they earn.

Nick Clegg: NHS reforms must deliver for patients

The Lib Dems are continuing to work in Parliament to ensure NHS reforms deliver a better deal for patients.

Nick Clegg’s party won major changes to the reforms earlier this summer.

These included measures to ensure there will be no privatisation of the NHS and no special favours for the private sector.

Nick Clegg said, “With the Lib Dems, the NHS will always be free at the point of use and will deliver top quality treatment for patients. We want to deliver a better NHS that can cope with the increasing demand and rising health costs.”

The NHS reforms will cut waste and bureaucracy that costs billions of pounds. They will help the NHS cope with the costs of Britain’s steadily ageing population and the rising cost of many treatments.

By making the NHS more efficient and by protecting the NHS budget from cuts, more money can be spent on improving care for patients.

NHS faced disaster with Labour
Had Labour won the last election, the NHS would have faced deep spending cuts. That along with Labour’s refusal to tackle waste and inefficiency would have been a disaster for our health services.

Labour rigged the market in favour of the private sector by giving contracts that were unfair for the taxpayer and for patients.

Over £250million of taxpayers’ money was handed over by the last Labour government to private providers for operations they didn’t even perform.

The Liberal Democrats have made sure that this kind of favouritism towards the private sector will now be illegal.

Lib Dem MP Simon Hughes has led a review of access to higher education. He spent six months traveling around the country to speak with thousands of young people about the changes to university financing and all other concerns they have about access to higher education

Last week he published his final report. It contains over 30 recommendations directed towards schools and colleges, universities, government and regulators on what they can do to encourage participation in higher education. You can download a copy of the report from the Cabinet Office website here: Hughes Report

Leader of the Lib Dems Nick Clegg talks to fellow Lib Dem MP Julian Huppert about the issues raised by the phone hacking scandal.

The phone hacking scandal has uncovered a crisis that strikes at the heart of our democracy, calling into question our trust in the institutions and individuals tasked with protecting our freedom and enforcing the rule of law.

Liberal Democrats have for more than a decade challenged the dominance of News International, with successive Parliamentarians raising the issue, from Paddy Ashdown in 1998 to Chris Huhne just before the General Election. We have time and again battled both the Conservatives and Labour to push for stronger laws on media plurality seeking to prevent the concentration of power in the hands of a few media moguls.

It is vital that we now build on the select committee hearings and cast a greater spotlight on what was clearly a murky relationship between the press, police and indeed politics. That is why the Liberal Democrats have made sure the inquiry is Judge-led and has the power to summon witnesses to give evidence under oath and sits in public.