Tag Archives: 2023 autumn conference

Michael Hall

Tackling the Housing Crisis – Policy Paper 155 – Motion F31

By Michael Hall | Fri 1st September 2023 - 3:54 pm

This policy paper deserves careful study in advance of our Conference in Bournemouth, as it contains many good ideas for tackling the housing crisis, which must be one of the most important priorities of a Liberal Democrat-led Government.

The section on the very important and complex issue of leasehold reform at the end, has been included in the chapter on The Planning System, and says “(we) would fix the flaws in the current planning system by…” and there follow four bullet points, of which the last is “Abolish leasehold for residential properties and cap ground rents to a nominal value.”  The law relating to leaseholds is not, of course, actually part of the planning system, and this subject of leasehold reform would have merited a chapter of its own, or indeed a whole policy paper.

The authors of this policy paper do not seem to be proposing simply to abolish residential leases, so that leaseholders no longer own an estate in land, and can be evicted without a court order.  Reading between the lines it appears to be suggested that leaseholders should automatically be given commonholds instead of their leases.

However, paragraph 11.6.1 suggests “introducing changes to the planning system to curb the worst excesses of England’s leasehold system”. So, it seems it is not intended to change property law, but only planning law. But planning law does not relate to freeholds, leaseholds or commonhold. It is about controlling the use of land, rather than the ownership of land.

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Jane Dodds

Jane Dodds writes: Basic Income is a liberal idea and we must reclaim it

By Jane Dodds | Thu 31st August 2023 - 10:42 am

As a long-standing advocate of Basic Income I was incredibly excited that my native Wales was the first part of the UK to pilot this policy idea. I have supported the Labour Government in this process and am following developments with optimism.

The pilot is centred around young people leaving the care system. This is a particularly disadvantaged group of youngsters who ordinarily would be more or less left to their own devices when they reach their 18th birthday and are no longer considered children by the system.

There is already evidence that the generous £400 per week package is being used by these young people to go on courses, or to put down a deposit on a flat. One young person has used it to pay for driving lessons.

Even though the scheme has been criticised constantly by Conservatives in Wales, who say among other things that these young people will be taken advantage of, there is no evidence so far of that happening.

The scheme has been in place for a year and there is another year to go. The trial is being evaluated independently by Cardiff University and I am convinced that it will show that a Basic Income is good for people, for communities and for the economy.

Which is also why I am disappointed that our own party, which led the way in the UK by making Basic Income official party policy back in 2020, now appears to be backsliding in its commitment to this very liberal idea.

For those unfamiliar with the concept, a Basic Income is a regular and unconditional payment to every individual in society, as a right of citizenship.

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Geoffrey Payne

Sarah Green MP to speak at Social Liberal Forum pre conference dinner

By Geoffrey Payne | Mon 28th August 2023 - 7:55 am

Are you going to Lib Dem conference next month? Conference starts at 9am on the Saturday morning, so if you want to be there and not miss anything you probably need to arrive the day before. 

So what is happening on the day before on Friday evening? Well the conference program will not mention anything because conference has not started yet. There will be hundreds of Lib Dem members in Bournemouth, but nothing is happening. 

Apart from one event that we in Social Liberal Forum (SLF) are organising. For every in-person autumn Lib Dem conference the SLF have organised their pre-conference dinner and we would like to welcome LDV readers to come and join us. We are delighted to announce that our guest speaker at this event will be Sarah Green MP, winner of the Chesham and Amersham by-election and a former director of the SLF. This will be a great opportunity to meet other conference representatives before conference starts.

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Mark Pack

Mark Pack’s monthly report to members

By Mark Pack | Thu 17th August 2023 - 10:47 am

Hello, Mid Bedfordshire

We don’t yet know for sure about when a Mid Bedfordshire by-election will take place after Nadine Dorries redefined “immediately” with her promise to step down straight away turning into a longer-running saga. But there is an active Lib Dem campaign up and running for Emma Holland-Lindsay, with some lovely letter boxes to admire.

Please do help if you can, in person or remotely, as Sarah Dykes’s stunning victory in Somerton and Frome shows just what we can achieve when we pull together behind a by-election campaign. A huge thank you to everyone  who contributed to that victory, a great burst of national media coverage and creating an abundance of Sarahs in the Lib Dem Parliamentary party.

What we stand for

One thing we do know the date of for sure is our autumn federal conference coming up in Bournemouth in September. The agenda and policy papers have now been published, and registration is open for both in-person and online attendance.

The agenda includes our pre-manifesto document, For A Fair Deal. This is both an up-to-date summary of our overall policies across all the main areas, and also has in its second chapter our overall story about the sort of society we want and how to get there. Well worth a read whether you’re coming to conference or not.

I look forward to meeting many of you there or in Mid Bedfordshire.

The importance of residents’ surveys

I’ve just been reading an advance copy of a fascinating new book coming out later this year about our party, and this nugget of data leapt out at me:

“In 2010, in nearly two-thirds of Liberal Democrat target seats a substantial amount of effort was put into running resident surveys during the pre-election period. This figure dropped to just a quarter of target seats in 2019.”

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Janey Little

Lib Dems should show courage on the housing crisis

By Janey Little | Thu 10th August 2023 - 9:47 am

We are in a housing crisis. This crisis means that people are struggling to afford the cost of renting, let alone home ownership.

But we know this, Priced Out recently gave evidence to the London Assembly which said that it would take the person on an average income 19 years to save for a deposit. Those who deny a housing crisis are simply ignoring the largest issue that is crushing the lives of younger people in our country.

In the Young Liberals we have young barristers, doctors and teachers who cannot afford to get onto the housing ladder. If it is affecting professionals in this way then it becomes obvious the impact on those earning below the national average.

With such a serious problem facing people in this country, the Liberal Democrats should be leading from the front in championing building enough homes to tackle the ever-spiralling cost of owning your own home.

However, to describe our response as lacklustre would be to do a disservice to the word lacklustre. The housing motion and policy paper coming to conference proposes the abolition of the national housing target, to be replaced with a nimby charter allowing local councils to pass the buck to the next council for housing young people.

But the worst part is the fact that the party has been told no twice, yet still persists in going against common sense and wanting to actively block the building of enough homes, perhaps believing that they stand a better chance of overturning the will of the party at a physical conference.

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Nick da Costa

Federal Conference Committee report – agenda selection for Autumn Conference

By Nick da Costa | Thu 13th July 2023 - 10:13 am

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.

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