Author Archives: Duncan Brack

All the documents for the party conference in Bournemouth in September are now available on the party website – including the Agenda & Directory, Fringe Guide, Training Directory, Reports, four policy papers and three consultation papers.

This includes two policy papers which are still open to amendment – ‘Make it Happen’, the party’s new ‘vision and values’ paper, and ‘Shaping our World through a Strong Europe’, the European policy paper. The deadline for amendments to the motions which accompany them is as noon on Tuesday 9 September – and this is also the …

The Preliminary Agenda for the federal conference in Bournemouth in September is now available on the party website.

All the policy and business motions included, including those accompanying the two policy papers (on security policy and on transport), are open to amendment; the deadline is 12 noon on Wednesday 9 July.

This is also the deadline for topical motions, which must be either on events happening after the 21 May deadline for motions, or related to any of the following topics: child care; crime and policing; health; housing; work and pensions.

I hope you’ll submit plenty of amendments and topical motions, …

Liberal Democrats are rightly proud of the fact that we remain the only major party to be internally democratic. Party policy can only be decided by the vote of the representatives of the party membership, after debate at the party conference.

Despite this, however, the number of policy motions submitted to conference has steadily fallen over the last ten years or so – down by about half between 1997 and 2007. This makes it more difficult for Federal Conference Committee (FCC) to select an agenda full of topics people actually want to speak about and debate. In addition, we are more …

I’ve submitted an amendment to the motion accompanying the health policy paper we’ll be debating this weekend at the Lib Dems’ spring conference in Liverpool, and our esteemed editors have asked to me to explain its reasoning.

The amendment aims to add to the list of things we want to do: ‘Concerted action across government to tackle the root causes of ill health and inequalities in health, including high levels of income and wealth inequality, poverty, poor housing and environmental pollution’.

The thinking behind it was triggered by listening to Nick Clegg’s comments when the paper was launched. He used the statistic – familiar from his leadership campaign, and a good illustration of the problem – that someone born in the poorest ward of Sheffield would have a life expectancy of fourteen years less than someone born in the richest ward. ‘And’, he added, ‘the NHS has to do something about this’.

The deadline for Policy Papers and for Constitutional and Standing Orders amendments is Wednesday 21st November (noon). All motions should be sent to the Policy Projects Team on , or at 4 Cowley Street, London SW1P 3NB.

Any queries, please contact the Policy Projects Team on 020 7219 2576

(The deadline for policy and business motions is 9 January.)