Author Archives: Nick Da Costa

The Federal Conference Committee met on Saturday to run through a number of items leading up to the Autumn Conference in Bournemouth, which is being held from 23 to 26 September. If you have not yet registered for the conference you can do so via this link. As in Spring we also have an online registration option, which includes streaming of the auditorium and online voting.

Just jumping a little ahead as well, the Federal Conference Committee has announced the 2024 dates and venues for Spring and Autumn Conferences.

Spring Conference

15 to 17 March 2024 to be held in York

Autumn Conference

14-17 September 2024 to be held in Brighton

At our meeting this Saturday we discussed a number of items relating to the upcoming and future conferences, including the agenda selection (which I will come onto shortly), and also set-piece speeches and the structure and format of conference. We also reviewed some of the options for future conferences as well and will be announcing more on this once we have confirmed venues and options.

As part of the agenda selection process, we also reviewed a number of standing order amendments that the Federal Conference Committee will be submitting ourselves, as part of our Constitution and Standing Orders Tidy Up Working Group. This initial round is based on feedback from members and also the Committee.

Aside from this meeting, the FCC’s Innovation Working Group will be meeting in the next few weeks to start preliminary works on ideas and concepts that will then be introduced at the Conferences in 2024 and onwards. One of the areas the Working Group will most certainly consider will be further enhancements to the hybridisation at Conference.

Conference is an excellent opportunity to engage with members from all across the country, to influence the party policy and strategy, and to a huge array of fringe and training events, which I recommend those attending to take full advantage of.

The agenda for conference, including the text of motions, policy papers and timings, will be published soon. As per usual, the Conference will include a range of different and interesting policy motions and debates, the Leader’s Speech, various committee and parliamentary reports, the Leader’s Q&A, plus a couple of policy consultations and a few set-piece speeches. As confirmed earlier this year, Kira Rudik (Leader of our sister party in Ukraine, member of the Ukrainian Parliament, and Vice President of ALDE) will be speaking at Conference, and also taking part in a Q&A fringe session as well.

It is possible that this is the last Autumn Conference in advance of a General Election, we have also asked the Chair of the Federal Elections and Campaigns Committee, Baroness Kath Pinnock, Director of Field Campaigns, David McCobb, and the Party CEO, Mike Dixon, to provide a General Election Briefing as an auditorium session.

We received a large number of motions from across the party, and are extremely grateful for the time and effort that members make in formulating policy motions and ideas for debate at Conference. We really wish that we could select so many more that ended up on the final list, but as always time at conference is at a premium and a large number of motions, although selected in the first round, did not make it through the second round when we then started to look at reducing timings.