Clegg's turn

Nick Clegg has just finished speaking to the LGA conference. Chris Rennard has emailed members about the contents of the speech but it set out a major vision of what devolution and decentralisation really means for our party.

Nick attacked the failure of Labour to deliver on promised devolution and the Tories for not really understanding what it means (at least in terms of not having any concrete policies to put their words into action).

He reiterated support for fairer local taxation - local income tax - for proper decentralisation and for reviewing how services such as the police can be made properly accountable locally.

He finished by asking councils to think about how they can devolve power to local neighbourhoods - citing Kingston and other Lib Dem run authorities which have taken real steps in this regard.