North West Hampshire Liberal Democrats

Commenting on the raising of the Personal Allowance further than already planned, local MP Chris Huhne said:

"Liberal Democrats are working for a stronger economy and a fairer society, so that everyone can get on in life. That's why we are cutting taxes for working people.

"Today's announcement means that by April, 582,800 ordinary working people in Hampshire will get a further Income Tax cut, bringing the total tax cut to £600 a year since Liberal Democrats joined the Coalition Government.

Liberal Democrats are working for a stronger economy and a fairer society, so that everyone can get on in life. That's why we have pulled out the stops for normal working people, increasing the tax-free allowance further from April next year. That means Liberal Democrats will have cut your taxes by £600 a year.

Liberal Democrat Faith Ponsonby won a stunning by-election on Thursday, 15 November! Having lost the seat in Battins Ward to Labour in May she got it back by holding another seat in the ward when Lib Dem Katie Ray resigned..

• Best of all the swing from Labour to Lib Dems since May 2012 was 17% and the Tories felt it was a really black day in this neck of the woods as they came third in the by-election.

The Lib Dems across Hampshire and the Isle of Wight are pleased to announce they have selected a retired Hampshire Police Inspector's son and local Councillor, David Goodall, as their candidate for the election of the Hampshire Police & Crime Commissioner.

David Goodall, 49, is also the brother of a serving Hampshire Police Inspector and does know quite a bit about a policeman's lot; both his father and brother have served across Hampshire and the Isle of Wight and had difficult incidents to deal with. David has been married to Kerstin since 1989 and they have two 15 year old sons, so he appreciates how effective policing affects the future happiness of our children.

Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg has used his keynote speech to the Lib Dem Party conference in Brighton to announce extra money for 110,000 children struggling with maths and English.

The Deputy Prime Minister said secondary schools in England will receive an extra £55 million to help pupils arriving in year seven who have slipped behind in English and maths at primary school. The money will come in from next January, with schools deciding how to spend it to help pupils with weaker results in maths and English.

Catherine spoke during a debate on aviation policy at the Liberal Democrat party conference in Brighton. Here is what she said:

Tim Yeo thinks its ok to bung another runway onto the sprawling Tarmac that is Heathrow.

That airport already pumps out pollution and noise affecting hundreds of thousands of people, but what the heck!?

Sharon Bowles MEP has given her support to the reports on MiFID and MiFIR* being voted on today in the Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee (ECON), saying while they may not be perfect yet, it is a good step forward in the cleaning up of financial trading and a boost for investor protection.

Bowles, who has chaired ECON since 2009, and was this week given the MEP award for that Committee, said: "I am pleased that my amendments on hard disclosure and remuneration have made it into the EP text, as it is vital that investors know exactly where their money is going, and they feel confident that they are being sold the right investment for them, not just what benefits the broker or bank. I thank my fellow Liberal MEP Olle Schmidt for all his hard work on this report".

Sharon Bowles, who represents the South East of England in the European Parliament, also pushed for work to be carried out on the standardisation of identifiers and messaging so as to ultimately enable real time transaction mapping: "We have this technology at our disposal: we should be using it to capture data instantly to advance supervisory oversight and analysis."

An important debate in the Parliament was how to regulate the trading of commodity derivatives which prompted a widespread campaign across Europe. Ms Bowles believes that the compromise reached should be well received: "We are clamping down on so-called "food speculation", by imposing hard limits on how many contracts or positions one market participant can hold at a time, which will promote stable conditions and prevent market abuse. In addition, rigorous checks by national and European authorities will be enforced on those who have a real interest in the physical commodity and carry out genuine hedging."

However, Ms Bowles was disappointed with the outcome of the articles in the Regulation on open access to clearing houses for trading venues, and benchmark licensing: "I find the deletion of Article 30 which calls for non-discriminatory access to licences for benchmark indices frankly bizarre in this time of more transparency and consumer choice. It is possible to balance the interests of index owners and public here, which I will continue to press for."

"If trading venues had open access to CCPs for all financial instruments, and vice versa, there would be greater competition leading to more choice and lower fees for the investor. There are systemic risk matters to consider as well as competition."

Over 20 million working people will be better off next year after Liberal Democrats in the Coalition Government delivered the biggest ever increase in the income tax personal allowance in the Budget.

The massive £3.5bn tax cut for working people delivers:

• The biggest ever single uplift in the tax threshold
• A personal allowance of £9,205 in April 2013
• 21 million working people getting an extra £220 tax cut
• Brings the total tax cut for basic rate tax payers to £550
• Brings the total number of people lifted out of tax to 2 million.

Liberal Democrat Leader Nick Clegg used his speech to the Party's Spring conference in NewcastleGateshead to call for the forthcoming budget to be a "budget for fairness" and pledged that it would help working familes.

The Deputy Prime Minister pledged that by 2015 Britain would have seen an end to control orders, the first gay marriages and the first elections to the House of Lords.

Fairer taxes, promoting green jobs, protecting your civil liberties - these are just some of the achievements of the Liberal Democrats in government.

We're building a freer, greener and more liberal country - and stopping some of the worst excesses of the Conservatives. Find out more in this infographic.