Section:GDN BE PaGe:1 Edition Date:100920 Edition:04 Zone: Sent at 20/9/2010 0:03 cYanmaGentaYellowblack12A

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Clegg’s pledge: Tory pact is for one term onlyLib Dem leader attempts to reassure party amid rumblings of discontent Patrick Wintour Political editor

Nick Clegg will seek to reassure his anxious party that the Liberal Democrat identity is secure by promising today that there will be no electoral pact with the Conserva-tives and holding out the prospect of a coalition deal with Labour after the next election .

During a sometimes uneasy hour-long question and answer session with del-egates on the fi rst full day of the party’s conference, the Lib Dem leader refused to give ground on the running of the coali-tion. He also admitted he was under con-stant pressure from friends and colleagues to pick a fi ght with the prime minister, David Cameron, and to show the extent to which his party was distinct from the Conservatives .

He insisted that he would not manu-facture synthetic rows with the Conserva-tives simply to raise his party’s progres-sive identity.

Discussing the spending cuts he also conceded that “people are starting to believe a lot of this hype that we are imposing these things for a swivel-eyed ideological zeal overnight”.

In his setpiece speech to conference this afternoon he will emphasise the tem-porary nature of the coalition by telling his party: “The Liberal Democrats and Con-servatives are, and always will be, sepa-rate parties with distinct histories and dif-ferent futures. But for this parliament we work together to fi x the problems we face and put the country on a better path. That is the right government for now.”

He will also restate the case for entering into coalition : “People have got used to us being outsiders against every government that comes along. Maybe we have got used to it ourselves. But the door to change we want was opened, for the fi rst time in most of our lifetimes. Imagine if we had turned away. How could we ever have asked the voters to take us seriously again ?”

In a sign of the unease on the left that the party is being squeezed, in terms of

visibility and its poll rating, the former Liberal Democrat MP Evan Harris writes in the Guardian: “We need closer iden-tifi cation of Lib Dems in parliament, in the media and in government with those coalition plans that are Lib Dem-inspired and conversely some distancing from Tory-imposed policies.”

He also urged his party to take a leaf out of the Tory right’s book by communicating unhappiness about illiberal policies.

The remarks calling for greater Lib Dem ownership of policies do not represent a revolt, however, but more of a warning shot that the party has to work harder to maintain its distinctive identity.

In a sign that the leadership is aware of the mood of many ordinary members, the main policy announcement yesterday was a promise to be ruthless with the rich who avoid or evade paying tax . HM Revenue & Customs will be granted £900m to tackle those who, in the words of the Treasury chief secretary, Danny Alexander, had made “a lifestyle choice” not to pay taxes. He also promised to focus more revenue resources on those on the new 50p rate earning more than £150,000.

The phrase was a deliberate echo of the chancellor George Osborne’s threat to get tough with those who had made “a life-style choice” to be benefi t cheats.

Clegg, however, was adamant that he would not “manufacture synthetic rows” inside the coalition or hang out dirty washing of internal disputes just to pla-cate grassroots members.

Such tactics “might give you a good feel-ing for about fi ve minutes”, he said. “But it would do something much, much worse in the long run. It would destroy what we are trying to create, which is showing the country at large that doing politics diff er-ently, that coalition politics, is possible. That is the big prize.”

He said people were yearning for an end to adversarial politics and craved pluralism and diversity in politics. “It is a long game,” he insisted.

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Drastic pruning: number of plants cut by more than half Juliette Jowit

More than 600,000 plant species have been deleted from the dictionary of life after the most comprehensive assessment carried out by scientists.

For centuries , botanists have been col-lecting “new” plants without realising that many were the same. The humble tomato boasts 790 diff erent names, for example, while there are 600 diff erent monikers for the oak tree . Although experts have long known that the list of over 1m fl owering species included duplicates , no one was sure how many. Later this year, the study team, led by UK and US scientists, will announce that the real number of species around the world is closer to 400,000.

The project – which has taken nearly three years – was the number one request made by the 193 government members of the Convention on Biological Diversity at their meeting in 2002. There were con-cerns that without this work, it would be impossible to work out how many plants were under threat and how successful conservationists were in saving them. The information will also be vital for any

organisation or researcher looking at “economically important” plants, such as those for food and nutrition or medicine, said Alan Paton, assistant keeper of the herbarium at the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew , one of the partners in the project.

“ O ne plant might have between two and three names, which doesn’t sound a great deal, but if you’re trying to fi nd infor-mation on a plant, you might not fi nd all [of it] because you’re only looking at one name,” Paton said. “That’s even more critical for economically useful plants: because they are more used, they tend to have more names.”

In one example, researchers calculated that for the six most -used species of Plec-tranthus, a relative of the basil plant, a researcher would miss 80% of information

available if they looked under only the most commonly used name . On another database, they found only 150 of 500 nutri-tionally important plant species using the names cited in current literature.

“By going for one name, we missed the majority of information mankind knows about that plant, which isn’t too clever,” said Paton. “What’s really a breakthrough is we have a place which allows people to search through all the names used.”

Kew Gardens joined up three years ago with Missouri Botanical Garden in the US, and experts on two of the biggest and most valuable plant families: legumes, or peas and beans, and Compositae, which includeasters, daisies and sunfl owers.

Scientists have cut duplication in the lists of fl owering species, bringing the number down from 1m to around 400,000

Five years on What happened to the millennium development babies?

Sarah Boseley New York

World leaders gather ing to discuss the millennium development goals (MDG) on poverty and ill-health will this week put the lives of women and small children at the centre of their eff orts.

The summit in New York, which starts today , will seek to agree on a plan to close the gap on the eight targets which the G8 agreed to meet by 2015.

In an interview with the Guardian, Sarah Brown, the wife of the former prime

minister , said that stopping deaths in preg-nancy and childbirth was “one of the great-est opportunities of our time”, as she pre-pares to host a New York meeting of some of the world’s most infl uential women.

“If we can fi x things for mothers, we can fi x so many other things that are wrong in the world,” she said. “Women are at the heart of every family, every nation. It’s mostly mothers who make sure children are loved, fed, vaccinated, educated. You just can’t build healthy, peaceful, prosper-

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Sijjin

Debrah

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Zainab

Confi dant

Hannah

Innocent Wyclif

Inside

Online

Read our four-page special about these fi ve-year-olds and what their lives tell us about Africa’s future Pages 19-22 ≥

More about the children, as well as news and analysis of development issues on our new website at guardian.co.uk/global-development ≥

‘I was shameful ...’Robin Williams talks to Decca AitkenheadG2 Cover story

Berbatov shinesHat-trick helps United beat Liverpool Sport Page 1

£1.00Monday 20.09.10Publishedin London andManchesterguardian.co.uk

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