Category Archives: Party policy and internal matters

Anything to do with Lib Dem internal business, including policy development, consultations, rules and constitutions.

Is your local party taking part in the Mid-Term Review?

By Geoff Payne | Published 5th February 2012 - 3:50 pm

It is hard to believe but we are shortly to approach the half-way point in this Parliament. It seems a very long time ago that the Coalition Agreement was negotiated and voted on at the Special Conference at the NEC in Birmingham. That document articulated several goals including deficit reduction and being the greenest government ever.

Having been in government for a little under two years, the time has come to take stock and consider what has been achieved thus far and what more there is to be done.

At Federal Conference in Birmingham, Norman Lamb MP ran a consultation session on …

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Have your say on our Rural Policy paper

By Tessa Munt MP | Published 31st January 2012 - 3:53 pm

It is my firm belief that local people know the area they live in best, village to village, town to town.

I have been asked to have a think about what policy changes should be made so that people in rural areas get a fairer deal and the resultant rural policy paper will be presented at Autumn Conference. Clearly, we must be realistic – none of us expects to have major services (such as hospitals) on our doorstep. However, it seems to me that there are some areas of Government policy which could reflect rural needs more effectively.

I chose …

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Julian Huppert MP writes… A new Lib Dem science and research policy

By Julian Huppert MP | Published 30th January 2012 - 4:23 pm

Britain has an excellent track record in science and research, with many great figures in natural sciences, humanities, computing, computing, engineering and mathematics over the years. We continue to outperform other countries in our achievements in these fields, in terms of outputs per person and per pound. We publish 13.8% of the world’s most cited papers, and massively outperform other countries on papers and citations per pound spent or per researcher.

However, we should not just assume that this will just continue automatically, and the UK needs both a thorough vision and policies that support science and research. It is in …

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A close escape – and now we should change our Euro-selection rules

By Mark Pack | Published 29th January 2012 - 2:50 pm

This week the Liberal Democrats have had a close escape. Diana Wallis’s sudden resignation as an MEP highlight flaws in the party’s rules for picking a successor.

Those rules aren’t new, but many people (myself included) have not paid that much attention to them in the past. It was only the circumstances of a resignation surrounded by controversy which brought attention to their weaknesses. Weaknesses only side-stepped by the decision of Stewart Arnold not to seek to succeed Diana Wallis.

Most of the events of the last few days are specific to the Diana Wallis resignation – the fallout amongst …

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What happens if someone tries to join the Liberal Democrats?

By Mark Pack | Published 26th January 2012 - 10:55 am

No reply. That’s what happens a third of the time if a member of the public contacts a Liberal Democrat local party via the internet according to a ‘mystery shopper’ exercise I carried out earlier this month.

Taking the publicly advertised email addresses for 25 local parties, I tried sending them all a test email from someone asking about joining the party. Just under two-thirds responded within 48 hours, which is a good response time. However, beyond that there were only a couple of further replies and the others have, after more than two weeks, not replied at all.

It is a …

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How should Diana Wallis be replaced?

By Mark Pack | Published 19th January 2012 - 11:22 pm

A question for Liberal Democrat members to mull… Under the law used for regional list elections, the decision over who should take over following Diana Wallis’s resignation as an MEP is up to the party (technically, the party’s Nominating Officer).

The general assumption in the past has been that if a list member stands down, it is whoever would have got their place on the list that takes over. That is the process followed in the past, such as in deciding Liz Lynne’s replacement as an MEP on her retirement or Lynne Featherstone’s replacement as a GLA member on her election …

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Our time to lead the debate: Employee ownership

By Norman Lamb MP | Published 17th January 2012 - 11:29 am

In the debate on so-called crony capitalism two things are clear. First there is genuine and widespread anger at corporate greed and irresponsible capitalism. Second, politicians from the left have been groping around, without much success, trying to come up with convincing responses. Ed Miliband drew a distinction between producers and predators. But he failed to offer any answers.

We see power and wealth concentrated in the hands of the few – the benefits of success going to those at the top rather than being fairly shared between all those who generated that wealth. Even worse, company bosses too often get …

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The Beveridge Group announces its relaunch

By NewsHound | Published 10th January 2012 - 12:18 pm

The Liberal Democrat Voice team have received a press release from John Pugh MP, which may be of interest to those in the Party keen to engage in debate on policy and philosophy.

With an eye to the new parliamentary year and forthcoming legislation, the Beveridge Group has reformed and a new updated website is already up and running. The initiative follows widespread concern inside and outside parliament as to where Coalition policy on public services may be going.

We want to prompt a proper debate as to where the …

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What Chris Fox did next

By Stephen Tall | Published 6th January 2012 - 3:45 pm

It’s four months since we reported the departure of party chief executive Chris Fox, who did such a good job of filling the big shoes of his predecessor, Chris Rennard.

Apparently, though, there is life beyond the Lib Dems — as PR Week reports:

Chris Fox today started in his newly created post of director of group comms at London-listed GKN, which employs around 40,000 people in 30 countries. … In an internal email to Liberal Democrat colleagues, Fox said there had ‘been few dull moments’ during his three-year spell with the party, adding: ‘I am looking forward to

…

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Richard Thomas is Welsh Lib Dems’ new Chief Executive

By Helen Duffett | Published 3rd January 2012 - 5:32 pm

Richard Thomas started today as the Chief Executive of the Welsh Liberal Democrats.

The BBC reports:

The Welsh Liberal Democrats’ former head of communications has been appointed as the party’s chief executive.

Richard Thomas takes up the post as the Lib Dems get ready for local elections in all Welsh councils in May.

He takes over from Joanne Foster who now works for Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg.

As well as his previous job with the party, he has worked for Lib Dem MPs and as a public affairs consultant.

Here’s how Richard shared the news on Twitter:

…

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How you can help make the workings of party committees more accountable

By Mark Pack | Published 3rd January 2012 - 1:50 pm

One issue which comes up regularly in different ways is party members feeling they do not know what the party’s federal committees are up to in their name. Without getting too lost into the rights and wrongs of each individual case, I think we have a problem from both ends – committee members do not communicate enough and also members do not get in touch with them enough.

The way to break that is to improve the basic flow of information, so more information comes out from committees, prompting members in turn to ask and lobby more, prompting committee members in …

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The four things the new party Chief Executive must prioritise

By Mark Pack | Published 1st January 2012 - 11:50 am

Dear Tim,

Congratulations on your appointment as Chief Executive of the Liberal Democrats. You take up the post in tough but exciting times.

Even if you were not one person but a superhuman army of fifty you would not be able to do all the things party members and staff are saying they want from the new Chief Executive. As you are but one person (I hold out hope on the superhuman front) you will inevitably have to pass up on many of these demands.

Picking the right priorities will be central to being a successful Chief Executive and so here are the four priorities I think you should pick.

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Get your skates on and submit a motion to Liberal Democrat conference about wealth taxes

By Mark Pack | Published 27th December 2011 - 9:25 am

Nick Clegg’s recent ‘open society’ speech confirmed that increases taxes on wealth in some form is very much on the political agenda. However, the default party policy option – a mansion tax – was highly controversial in the party when it was introduced (which is rather a polite term for the rolling lesson in how to bungle a policy launch, annoy MPs, irritate party members and feed negative stories to the media all in one fell swoop).

In other words – now is a very good time for the party to be debating what form of wealth taxes it favours, especially after the opportunity was missed at the party’s autumn conference. As I wrote at the time in Tax: The missing ingredient from the Liberal Democrat conference agenda,

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Say hello to OSKAR – Lib Dems’ Online Skills and Resources website

By Giorgia Gamba | Published 15th December 2011 - 11:21 am

It is recognised that the Liberal Democrats offer their members the best and broadest range of conference training of all three main political parties. Training is delivered at Federal and Regional Conferences, through Winning Teams as well as at specific events organised by local parties across the country.

However, we know it is not always easy for Lib Dem busy members to attend training, and limited resources mean that trainers cannot always reach as many people as they would like within the party.

To extend the reach of our training offer, I have been working on sourcing, implementing and developing online training …

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Scotland’s new Executive, Policy and Conference Committees chosen

By Caron Lindsay | Published 14th December 2011 - 2:25 pm

Scotland recently held its internal elections to determine the make up of its Party Committees and Office Bearers.

Only one office bearer post was contested, that of Vice Convener (Campaigns and Candidates). That election was won by Katy Gordon, former candidate for Glasgow North and the Glasgow Regional list and Convener of Scottish Women Liberal Democrats.

Office bearers continuing in post are:

Convener: Craig Harrow

President: Malcolm Bruce MP

Deputy Leader: Jo Swinson MP

Vice Convener (Policy): John Edward

Vice Convener (Conference): Shabnum Mustapha

All committee elections except Conference Committee are conducted by all member ballot. Scotland allows all members a vote at Conference, but only those who …

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