page_title: Vince Cable
section_title: Policies
hierarchical_section_title: Vince Cable / Leader of the Liberal Democrats / Policies
caption_attribution_description: English: Vince Cable addressing a fringe meeting during the 2018 Liberal Democrat conference, in the Hilton Brighton Metropole
context_page_description: Sir John Vincent Cable is a British politician who was Leader of the Liberal Democrats from 2017 to 2019. He was Member of Parliament for Twickenham from 1997 to 2015 and from 2017 to 2019. He also served in the Cabinet as Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills from 2010 to 2015.
  Cable studied Economics at Cambridge and Glasgow, before working as an economic adviser to the Government of Kenya in the 1960s, and for the Commonwealth Secretariat in the 1970s and 1980s. During this period, he also lectured in economics at Glasgow. He later served as Chief Economist for Shell in the 1990s. Initially active in the Labour Party, Cable became a Labour councillor in Glasgow in the 1970s, during which time he also served as a special adviser to then-Trade Secretary John Smith. In 1982, however, he defected to the newly-formed Social Democratic Party, which later amalgamated with the Liberal Party to form the Liberal Democrats.
  After standing unsuccessfully for Parliament four times, Cable was elected for Twickenham in 1997. He was quickly appointed the Liberal Democrat Treasury Spokesman, and was later elected as Deputy Leader in 2006.
context_section_description: In a manifesto released upon his ascent to leadership, Cable revealed his policy priorities as Liberal Democrat leader would include tackling inequality, improving public services, opposing Brexit, electoral reform and young people.
  In late 2017 Cable revealed that he had become "more interventionist" economically due to experiences while in the Coalition government. Subsequently, Cable has called for the blocking of several foreign takeovers of UK companies in the technology sector, and for the reform of UK takeover laws in the form of the 'Cadbury Clause' that had been suggested by figures within the Conservative Party. Following the leak of the Paradise Papers, Cable commented that direct rule of crown dependencies should be threatened if substantial progress was not made in curbing aggressive tax avoidance.
  In September 2017 Cable echoed Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson in calling for greater taxation of foreign speculators in the housing market. He has also called for the reform of empty dwelling management orders.
  In an 8 November 2017 pre-Budget speech at the City of London, Cable announced the Liberal Democrats under his leadership would seek to revive the fiscal Golden Rule of former Labour Chancellor Gordon Brown.
  In early 2018, Cable's leadership saw former Conservative donors Peter J Stringfellow and Charlie Mullins switch and pledge their support to Cable and the Liberal Democrats over Brexit.
  On education, Cable has rejected cutting or abolishing university tuition fees. He has instead announced that he would seek to implement lifelong learning accounts which would serve as endowments to all young people to help pay for education or training at any future date, and suggested this endowment could range from £5,000 to £10,000 per head (the average university student debt in England is £50,800 upon graduation as of 2017), costing around £10 billion a year. Cable claimed the policy could be funded from reform of capital gains, inheritance, and property taxes. Also on education, he proposes to abolish the Ofsted inspectorate and reform school league tables to focus on pupil well-being rather than exam results because a “change in emphasis” is needed away from competition. He supported the February 2018 USS strikes, calling for the government to underwrite lecturers' pensions, while refusing to cross a picket line at the Cass Business School.
  On 22 March, Cable announced that at an earlier meeting of European liberal parties he had garnered the signed agreements of eight European ALDE Prime Ministers demanding another referendum on the terms of Britain's exit from the European Union. Shortly after, however, in contradiction to Cable's announcement ALDE issued a statement denying that there had been any joint agreement about backing another referendum.
  In June, Cable set out plans to create a state land-buying agency to compulsorily purchase land at 40% below market value. Cable also unveiled a proposal to develop a sovereign wealth fund, totalling £100 billion of assets, to be paid for partly by a tax on gifts.
  In response to both the 2017 and 2018 Autumn Budget announcements, Cable called for a large increase in public services spending and the end of austerity, attacking the Conservative government's 2018 Autumn Budget for failing to meet his demands on increased spending. He criticised Labour for not voting against a package of Conservative tax cuts which included raising the personal income tax allowance and higher rate income tax threshold, money that he argued would be better used on reversing cuts to benefits.
caption: Cable addressing a Liberal Democrat fringe meeting in 2018
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