Category Archives: Party policy and internal matters

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

Mark Pack

Lib Dem spring conference in York and coronavirus

By Mark Pack | Wed 4th March 2020 - 4:26 pm

We’re keeping under close review our plans for the York conference in the light of the spread of coronavirus. Based on the health advice from the NHS and government, along with that from York Council, there are no current plans to cancel the conference.

We will, however, be ensuring that those coming to conference are reminded of health advice, such as the need for regular hand washing and the circumstances under which people should self-isolate. Hand sanitizers will also be made widely available.

Obviously if the advice we receive changes, we may have to revisit these decisions as the health of our colleagues and our suppliers must come first. It would be a decision for the Federal Board to take.

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Sheila Ritchie

Scottish internal elections

By Sheila Ritchie | Fri 28th February 2020 - 7:36 pm

We’ve got a raft of vacancies open on various Scottish Liberal Democrat committees.

Being on a committee is a really potent way of having your say on how our party is run. If you’re keen to get more involved, why not take a look?

Scottish Executive Committee – responsible for the day-to-day management and conduct of the party.

8 vacancies remaining to be filled

 

Scottish Policy Committee – responsible for researching and developing policy, as well as putting together election manifestos.

2 vacancies remaining to be filled

 

Scottish Conference Committee – responsible for organising Scottish conference

3 vacancies remaining to be filled

 

Never stood before? Don’t worry – the federal party has put together a guide to the process that you might find useful: https://www.libdems.org.uk/getting-nominated

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Mark Pack

Shaun Roberts stands down as Lib Dem director of campaigns & elections

By Mark Pack | Fri 28th February 2020 - 9:00 am

Writing in a public Facebook post, Shaun Roberts has announced his departure as the party’s Director of Campaigns & Elections:

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Sally Burnell

Federal Policy Committee report February 2020

By Sally Burnell | Thu 27th February 2020 - 10:23 am

Our latest meeting covered a range of policy issue discussions and future planning items.

One of our main discussion items was on potential topics for future policy motions and spokespersons’ papers beyond the scheduled policy papers being developed through our working groups. The Federal Policy Committee is keen to support and encourage other parts of the party to develop policy motions to enable a range of current issues to be taken to conference. Recently we’ve worked in collaboration with spokespeople to take forward motions on tourism, rehabilitation of offenders, and rail. We considered a range of policy topics including modern slavery & trafficking, international development, childhood, planning policy and housing, specific areas of transport policy, small business, tech/AI, and arts/culture.

We discussed these options and others considering what could be worked up in time for Autumn conference and what would provide strong messages to support us in the elections in May 2021. Based on the feedback we’ll engage with spokespeople and relevant SAOs/AOs and other party bodies to progress the ideas. We also looked ahead to start thinking about some future topics for working groups and this is a discussion that will continue.

We had an initial discussion about an idea tabled by Tony Greaves on a piece of work to address the so-called left behind areas of the country, taking a bottom up approach led by our councillors and campaigners in these communities. There was a lot of support for such an initiative but some questions around timing and resourcing that will need to be considered further.

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Mark Pack

Andy Corkhill selected by LibDems to be Liverpool City regional mayor

By Mark Pack | Sun 23rd February 2020 - 2:05 pm

Good luck to Councillor Andy Corkhill who has been selected as the Liberal Democrat candidate for the Liverpool City Region (LCR) Metro Mayor

Selected by party members for this May’s Metro Mayor contest, Andy Corkill stood in Wirral West at the 2019 general election and has been a councillor in Wirral since May 2019.

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The Voice

Isabelle Parasram elected as Vice President of the Liberal Democrats

By The Voice | Thu 20th February 2020 - 9:58 am

Late last year members elected the majority of members to our Federal Committees, included the Federal Board. More recently nominations were invited for a range of other positions, and the elected members of the Federal Board held a min-election to fill them. On Monday we reported the results.

One late announcement is that of the Vice-President of the party.

Congratulations to Isabelle Parasram! She was re-elected having previously been elected last March to that role when it was first created. Caron Lindsay shared that news with us then.

Isabelle is a PPC …

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Paul Walter

Fascinating stuff at York!

By Paul Walter | Wed 19th February 2020 - 2:47 pm

It’s not too late to register for the York Spring conference, which is happening on the weekend of March 13-15th. You can register here.

We’ve already covered the main policy motions which will be debated in the main hall.

But there will be oodles of other stuff going on – both in the main hall and in rooms around and about the conference venues of the York Barbican, the Novotel York Center and the Hilton York.

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Paul Walter

The spring conference motions explained

By Paul Walter | Mon 17th February 2020 - 10:55 am

Over on the party website, Conference committee chair, Geoff Payne has provided a helpful rundown of the motions to be debated at the spring conference in York in the weekend of March 13th-15th.

Here are his summaries of the motions, which party members can access in full via this page on the party website:

F4 – Hong Kong
This motion introduces new party policy on the human rights situation in Hong Kong. It calls for:

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The Voice

2020 Federal Committee election results

By The Voice | Mon 17th February 2020 - 9:43 am

Back on January 20th, our President Mark Pack told us about opportunities for members to get involved in running the party. It seems there was a very good response to this, with many members putting themselves forward to be on federal party committees and such like.

Those nominated were put forward to the voting Federal Board members, and the following people have been elected to serve:

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The Voice

Our President writes: I’m immensely proud of how we’ve stood up for our values over Brexit

By The Voice | Sat 1st February 2020 - 9:40 am

Our Party President, MarkPack, sent this email to members yesterday evening:

For the last four years, the Liberal Democrats have proudly fought to stop Brexit.

I am immensely proud of everything we did. We stood up for our values. We campaigned so hard. But I also accept that at 11pm tonight, we will no longer be members of the European Union.

Our European story is not over. Tomorrow our fight continues, to make sure Britain has the closest possible relationship with our allies in Europe.

Today, I want to take stock of everything we did achieve in our fight to stop Brexit.

When the results of the European referendum were announced on that sad day in June 2016, we knew that something must be done. Our leader at the time, Tim Farron, did not wait to say that we deserved a vote on the final Brexit deal.

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Paul Walter

Dr Phillip Lee selected as Lib Dem parliamentary spokesperson for Wokingham

By Paul Walter | Fri 24th January 2020 - 3:00 pm

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Wokingham Today reports:

DR PHILLIP LEE is to carry on his connections to Wokingham after being appointed by the local Liberal Democrats to be its parliamentary spokesperson for the year ahead.

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Nick da Costa

The subjects selected and not selected for debate at the York spring conference

By Nick da Costa | Wed 22nd January 2020 - 3:35 pm

The new Federal Conference Committee met at LibDem HQ this Saturday to set out the agenda for York in March. The new FCC also held a meeting in November where feedback from the Autumn Conference was discussed, and officers were elected. Geoff Payne was re-elected as Chair, myself as Vice-Chair (General Purposes Sub Committee), and Jon Ball and Cara Jenkinson as Co-Vice Chairs (Conference Communications Group).

It is always difficult to sort through the motions that are submitted to the FCC for any conference. This year we did have a lower number of submissions – only 19, but there were some interesting motions that were selected. It seems that the December General Election may have had an impact on the lower submissions, so we are looking forward to more submissions for the Autumn Conference.

Timings are always tight at Spring Conference, and we have tried to maximise debating time. There are inevitably some items that must be held at Conference (leader’s speech, and Committee and Parliamentary reports.) We have also made time for two consultations, one Federal Board General Election review, and one Federal Policy Committee manifesto review. We have also allowed two slots for emergency motions, as various political changes are happening at the moment which may require motions to be submitted.

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The Voice

Dorothy Thornhill will chair panel to review into both the General election and the European elections

By The Voice | Tue 21st January 2020 - 12:40 pm

This comes from a post by Party President and Co-leader Mark Pack, on the party’s website, explaining some output from Saturday’s Federal Board meeting:

Election Review

The (Federal) Board has commissioned a review into both the General election and the European elections.

This review will be run independently of those who ran the elections, with a panel of experts who have a broad range of skills from knowing about grassroots election campaigns through to understanding what the very best decision-making processes in organisations look like.

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Mark Pack

Our President and co-leader writes: How you can get involved in helping to run the party

By Mark Pack | Mon 20th January 2020 - 2:30 pm

The Liberal Democrats are about to fill nearly 50 important posts, responsible for everything from oversight of our campaigns through to improving our record on diversity and making sure our finances are in good shape.

Please do both think about going for one of these posts yourself, and also who else you might want to encourage to put their name forward.

We need the best team possible – which means people with brilliant skills, time to do the job properly and a much greater diversity than we often manage with such exercises.

If anyone would like to know more about what a particular post involves, I’m very happy for you to put them in touch with me and I can either directly help or put them in touch with someone with experience of the post.

More details of the posts are over on the party website.

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James Gurling

Future Party Communications and Elections Committee Chair

By James Gurling | Fri 17th January 2020 - 9:40 am

Each new Federal Board elects someone to Chair the campaigning and communications function of the Party and having been re-elected for a cumulative period of 10 years in the role, I shall not be standing for a further three when the Federal Board elects the next Chair.

I was first elected as Chair of the Campaigns and Communications Committee (CCC) – the precursor to the current Federal Communications & Elections Committee (FCEC) – in the immediate aftermath of the 2010 General Election. Half the time since that the Party has been in Government in Westminster … and the other half seemingly dealing with the consequences.

Constitutional changes in 2016 ended the practice of the Leader appointing different individuals to Chair separate General, Local and European campaigns and transferred the responsibility to the elected Chair of the FCEC. Expectations at the time were that my first general election campaign would be in 2020. I relished the prospect – putting into practice all the learnings from 2015 would be a substantial task – but one which the Party was more than up to. Instead of which, I have served three Leaders and overseen two general elections, each of them called at short notice and in challenging circumstances.

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Jeremy Hargreaves

Federal Policy Committee report January 2020

By Jeremy Hargreaves | Sat 11th January 2020 - 2:00 pm

Our meeting this week covered a number of areas.

We had firstly a very useful chat with Neil Stockley, chair of the working group on utilities, which is still at an early stage and whose timetable has been heavily disrupted by the excitements of the autumn. We reviewed the use or, if you like I suppose the utility, of this exercise in the rather changed political circumstances since we decided to set it up last year. We agreed that it remains a helpful area for us to focus on, not least as it has a clear direct impact on people’s everyday experiences – and costs – in a way which some policy areas do not. A full discussion concluded that it was helpful to retain its planned focus on utilities, not to expand it into consumer affairs more generally, and that while it shouldn’t exclude consideration of rail as a utility, it would not aim to be a full rail or transport paper, which there is a good case for but which we will come back to for further consideration.

We reviewed a draft motion on constitutional reform we are submitting for spring conference, in discussion with Wendy Chamberlain MP, the party’s new spokesperson on constitutional affairs. We felt this was a useful area to focus on following the constitutional issues arising from the autumn’s shenanigans, and one where as Liberal Democrats we generally have a clear and strong view. A full discussion took the view that it would be most useful to narrow the initially planned quite broad scope of this to focus specifically on the electoral reform aspects. The intention of this motion is to highlight clear Liberal Democrat answers to the issues here, rather than to develop major new policy. We have submitted this motion for spring conference and it will be up to FCC whether they select it for debate. This discussion also threw up a useful early review of how we might approach some of the important and tricky challenges around UK and English federalism and devolution, which we will come back to.

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The Voice

Opening up party conferences for all

By The Voice | Wed 8th January 2020 - 6:30 pm

If you would like to attend the Spring Conference in York from March 15th – 17th and are worried about the cost of attending, then the Conference Access Fund may be able to help you.

The fund is taking applications up until January 22nd.

If you would like help with the accommodation, travel, childcare, disability or access-related costs related to attending the conference, then please do apply using this form.

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Greg Foster

An update on Lighthouse – our new Local Party Management tool

By Greg Foster | Wed 8th January 2020 - 3:30 pm

Happy New Year!

Over Christmas and New Year, a team of HQ staff and almost 60 volunteer testers from across the party as well as the team at Prater Raines have been hard at work testing Lighthouse, the party’s new Local Party Management tool.

The feedback from those users has been really encouraging. They’ve found the system really intuitive and easy to use.

It’ll also work for all parts of the party – from branches up to state parties and will solve a number of other long standing issues as well (thought not all on day 1!)

Of course, launch day is fast approaching – and you’ll all soon be able to get your hands on it.

This is how we’re planning to roll out Lighthouse:

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Paul Walter

Whatever happened to the class of 2015? – the full list

By Paul Walter | Wed 8th January 2020 - 11:20 am


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I suppose that it is very easy to get into the mindset that politics is everything in life. But it turns out that there is life outside of Westminster.

I read the other day that former Labour Deputy Leader, Tom Watson, is training to become a gym instructor.

That started me thinking about what had happened to our vast number of MPs from before the election in 2015.

Stephen Gilbert, former MP for St Austell and Newquay, for example. Whatever happened to him after he posted a “Gone Surfing” post-it note on his Twitter account in 2015? Well, it turns out he’s a teacher.

I then thought I’d better find about some of the others and, before I knew it, I was launching a vast spreadsheet and had started a huge task.

Anyway, here is the result of my researches, in alphabetical order. If you spot any omissions or errors, please let me know in the comments below:

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Paul Walter

Whatever happened to the class of 2015? – third and final excerpt

By Paul Walter | Tue 7th January 2020 - 11:00 am


Embed from Getty Images

I suppose that it is very easy to get into the mindset that politics is everything in life. But it turns out that there is life outside of Westminster.

I read the other day that former Labour Deputy Leader, Tom Watson, is training to become a gym instructor.

That started me thinking about what had happened to our vast number of MPs from before the election in 2015.

Stephen Gilbert, former MP for St Austell and Newquay, for example. Whatever happened to him after he posted a “Gone Surfing” post-it note on his Twitter account in 2015? Well, it turns out he’s a teacher.

I then thought I’d better find about some of the others and, before I knew it, I was launching a vast spreadsheet and had started a huge task.

Anyway, here is the third and final part of my researches, from P to W in alphabetical order (Part 1 is available here and part two is here). If you spot any omissions or errors, please let me know in the comments below:

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Paul Walter

Whatever happened to the class of 2015? (2)

By Paul Walter | Mon 6th January 2020 - 4:30 pm


Embed from Getty Images

I suppose that it is very easy to get into the mindset that politics is everything in life. But it turns out that there is life outside of Westminster.

I read the other day that former Labour Deputy Leader, Tom Watson, is training to become a gym instructor.

That started me thinking about what had happened to our vast number of MPs from before the election in 2015.

Stephen Gilbert, former MP for St Austell and Newquay, for example. Whatever happened to him after he posted a “Gone Surfing” post-it note on his Twitter account in 2015? Well, it turns out he’s a teacher.

I then thought I’d better find about some of the others and, before I knew it, I was launching a vast spreadsheet and had started a huge task.

Anyway, here is the second part of my researches, from H to M in alphabetical order (Part 1 is available here). If you spot any omissions or errors, please let me know in the comments below:

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Paul Walter

Music news: Two albums released by former Lib Dem MPs

By Paul Walter | Mon 6th January 2020 - 3:00 pm



During my researches for my “Class of 2015” articles, I have been delighted to find that two of our MPs from the “Class of 2015” have released musical albums.

Norman Baker, who lost his Lewes seat in 2015 and previously recorded with his band “The Reform Club”, has released a solo album called “Staying Blue” which is available widely on Angel Air Records. A couple of the tracks are on YouTube including “Shipping Forecast” (above) which includes a snippet of the BBC Radio 4 Shipping Forecast and these classic lines:

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Paul Walter

Reminder: there’s still time to get the early bird discount for the York Spring Conference

By Paul Walter | Sun 5th January 2020 - 1:04 pm

This is a gentle reminder that you can still take advantage of the “early bird” discount if you register before January 7th – that’s this coming Tuesday – for the York Spring Conference.

Due to feedback from our esteemed LDV editor, Caron, the deadline was extended especially to allow people sufficient time after the hard work of the election.

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The Voice

Spare a thought for our poor agents…

By The Voice | Sat 4th January 2020 - 4:08 pm


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While most of us are enjoying a bit of rest and recuperation following the election, spare a thought for our agents.

After ensuring that a “thank you” leaflet went out, most of them are having to knuckle down to sort out the expenses.

They are over-shadowed by a huge pile of receipts and facing a form, the complexity of which makes an HMRC Self-assessment form look simple.

Added to that, they face legal penalties if they don’t do it all correctly and on time.

No pressure then…

So this is a big “thank you” to all our agents for the complex and highly responsible job that you do!

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Laura Gordon

Rebellions are built in Hope – the launch of the Northern Liberal Network

By Laura Gordon | Fri 3rd January 2020 - 1:00 pm

New year is a time for new projects. And with a parliament likely to last four years, we have time to devote to thinking about where we want the party to be by 2024 – and how we get there. So before Christmas, Lisa Smart (Hazel Grove) and I met up for a pub lunch in the Peak District. We picked Hope, partly because it’s halfway between our homes, and partly because… well… we could use some hope.

While this election was disappointing across the board, the result masks significant regional variation. We did relatively well in London and the south east, despite heartbreaking near-misses in Wimbledon and Carshalton and Wallington. But elsewhere in the country our performance was weaker – even in areas, like Sheffield Hallam, that voted remain.

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Jeremy Hargreaves

Federal Policy Committee report – 16 December 2019

By Jeremy Hargreaves | Fri 20th December 2019 - 11:24 am

The first meeting of the Federal Policy Committee since the recent internal committee elections took place on Monday night. Clearly our discussions were much coloured by the General Election and some of its consequences, but nevertheless we had a constructive and positive meeting. It was great to welcome several new members of the committee: Helen Cross, Aria Babu, Alyssa Gilbert, Peter Thornton, Elinor Anderson and Rob Harrison. We were very pleased also that the party’s new chief executive, Mike Dixon, joined us for much of the meeting, which was very helpful.

First up was some committee business: Sally Burnell and Jeremy Hargreaves were elected as vice chairs of FPC, and Belinda Brooks-Gordon and Duncan Brack were elected to represent FPC at Conference Committee (FCC). We elected Lizzie Jewkes to chair the group which will carry out equalities impact assessments on policy proposals, along with Helen Cross, Mohsin Khan and Tara Copeland to be part of it. They will also involve others from outside FPC. We elected Lucy Nethsingha to represent FPC on the Federal International Relations Committee (FIRC) and as FPC delegate to ALDE Congress. We decided to co-opt the new chair of FIRC, the Young Liberals policy officer, and a representative of LDCRE to FPC.

We had a good discussion about how we can develop as effective as possible working relationships with party SAOs, AOs and regional parties. We very much welcome them being as involved as possible as we develop policy, and are keen to do whatever we can to encourage this. We will make a more pro-active effort to contact them with information about what we are doing, and we are as usual compiling a list of FPC members to be link people to individual groups. In the past we have had an FPC working group looking at what we can do practically to encourage more members to engage in policy – we agreed to re-start this, and they will also look at what more we can do particularly with party groupings such as these.

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Paul Walter

Our party co-leaders want to hear from us

By Paul Walter | Thu 19th December 2019 - 11:15 am

Our current co-leaders, Sal Brinton and Ed Davey, have written to party members asking for their initial thoughts on the general election campaign and results.

They write:

…we know we have a lot of work to do and many lessons to learn.

In the new year, we’ll be conducting a full independent review of this election. This will include a chance for you to give us all of your views on what worked, what didn’t, and what we need to do differently in the future.

But we also want to give you a chance to share your views before the Christmas break.

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Paul Fisher

Democracy in the Liberal Democrat family

By Paul Fisher | Sun 15th December 2019 - 1:11 pm

Liberal Democrats are agreed on equality and democracy, right? We all assume that this so. I am reminded of the old adage that to ‘assume’ can sometimes ‘make an ass of you and me’ (ass-u-me)!

In the run up to the European Parliamentary Elections in April 2019, we went through the procedure for the selection of our candidates for each European Parliamentary Constituency and, as expected, Party HQ sent out emails informing all the Membership of the process for these elections. Good so far? Many LibDem members living outside the UK were registered and eligible to vote in these European Parliamentary …

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Paul Walter

Something which might be an essential investment for the winter campaigning!

By Paul Walter | Thu 31st October 2019 - 9:47 am

Thanks very much to Jane Reed from York Liberal Democrats, who has emailed us about “touchscreen gloves”.

These are gloves which keep your hands warm but allow you to input data into your mobile phone or tablet.

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Jeremy Hargreaves

Welcome to the Lib Dem Health and Care Association!

By Jeremy Hargreaves | Mon 14th October 2019 - 12:58 pm

One of the great things about the Liberal Democrats is that whatever you’re interested in, there’s a group of like-minded people you can join to talk about it and exchange ideas with. Interested in the environment and climate change – join Green Lib Dems. Interested in Europe – join the Lib Dem European Group. Business your area? Join the Lib Dem Business and Entrepreneurs Network. From the Humanist & Secularist Lib Dems and the Lib Dem Christian Forum, all the way to the Lib Dem Friends of Vegans and Vegetarians, and the low-intensity Swiftian …

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