Party members should last night have received an email from David Laws with an update on next month’s conference. The majority of the agenda and the directory have now been made available on the party website (some items will be published following the rescheduled launch of the pre-manifesto next Monday).
To reflect the delayed publication the deadline for the submission of amendments and emergency motions has also been extended to Wednesday 24 September.
Here’s David’s email in full:
Important documents for the Glasgow Conference, including the Agenda and Directory, have just been made available on the party website – please click to see them.
The Pre-Manifesto, which I have been leading on as chair of the Manifesto Group, will now be published next Monday along with the policy papers on Public Services and an Ageing Society (which also include some of the same new policy proposals)
It was our original plan to launch the Pre-manifesto and publish all the conference papers together today. However, you will have seen the tragic event yesterday of the beheading by ISIL and the threat that a UK national will be next. Given the circumstances we felt would be inappropriate to launch our Pre-manifesto this morning. In view of this and the unfolding events over the next couple of days, not least the NATO summit, the launch has been postponed until Monday.The Agenda published today also does not include the motions covering the Pre-manifesto and the Public Services and Ageing Society policy papers. An updated Agenda will be published on Monday.
Because of the delay in making some of the policy motions available, the deadline for submitting amendments, emergency motions, topical issues and questions on reports is being put back to 1300 on Wednesday 24 September.
Thank you for your patience, and I look forward to a healthy debate on the Pre Manifesto and all the other motions in Glasgow.
Our party takes the full involvement of our members in policy development extremely seriously and this decision was only taken after very careful consideration. We hope you will understand why we felt it important to launch these important proposals in this way.
Best wishes,
David
* Nick Thornsby is a day editor at Lib Dem Voice.
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3 Comments
Why am I so suspicious about this delay ? Could it be because the most contentious items for debate in Glasgow, pre-manifesto and public services, are the ones being delayed ? Could it be that I naively though conference deadlines were a matter for the elected Federal Conference Committee not for Nick Clegg or David Laws ? No, it’s just that I’m what Stephen Tall calls a party purist, you know, one of those people a little fed up with presentation trumping democracy – again.
While those events are indeed tragic, I stick to the idea that if you change what you are doing in response to terrorists they get what they want. I suspect many other party members feel the same. While I welcome the extension of the deadline, I still think this was the wrong decision if it was taken for those reasons, and thus my suspicions are raised that other reasons might also have played a part. I wonder what they could have been?
Perhaps the delays are concerns about potentially holding our national conference abroad?