Tag Archives: 2024 spring conference

WATCH: Alistair Carmichael’s speech to Conference

By The Voice | Wed 20th March 2024 - 1:30 pm

On Sunday morning, Alistair Carmichael gave his keynote speech to Conference. It was as funny, liberal and hard=hitting as you would think.

Governments and babies’ nappies need changing often, much for the same reason, he said.

Liberal Democrats will have no truck with the demonisation of desperate people. We will crush the people smuggling market by giving people safe and legal routes to get here, he promised.

He said that Liberal Democrats mustn’t just tell people what we’re against. We must say what we are for. We champion the rights of the individual to do what they like as long as it doesn’t harm others. We also understand that meaningful freedom means pooling freedoms to form communities and upwards to nation states.

We are a party of law and order, he said, because we can’t be free if we don’t feel safe to leave our homes as he attacked the Conservative record on community policing.

He highlighted how the Conservatives are upping use of facial recognition technology like that used in China and how that had never been authorised properly by Parliament. Any influence we have in the next Parliament will be used to put the money wasted on this into frontline policing.

He warned that we might be sleepwalking into a surveillance state. He tackled that line much favoured by those who want to lead us down an increasingly authoritarian path “If you’ve nothing to hide, you’ve nothing to fear.” We are all perfectly entitled to hide things. It’s called privacy.

He reminded us of some of Labour’s failings on civil liberties – their “authoritarian streak a mile wide” with DNA databases and 90 day detention. We will not support any of that agenda should they go into power.

Liberal Democrats are not about splitting the difference between the Tories and Labour. We trust the people, they want to control them. We demand a change in the way we are governed. We demand a stronger, greener, fairer and more United Kingdom.

We need to get out there and fight of that door by door and street by street as if the future of our nation depends on it – because it does.

Watch the whole thing here:

The full text is below.

Posted in News | Also tagged Alistair Carmichael, civil liberties, featured and speeches | 2 Comments

Why we need good Cancer care

By Jenny Marr | Sun 17th March 2024 - 12:44 pm

I’m grateful to see the motion on Cancer care passed at Conference but I am sorry to my core that it had to be written in the first place.

I’m coming from a slightly different place than you might expect, partly because that place is Scotland and I know what is called for wouldn’t apply, but I wanted to tell a story which whilst does not have a happy ending, it had a happy-ish journey.

My mum died of cancer just over 18 months ago. She was diagnosed in December, and left us in the following July.

There wasn’t much time for the system not to work for her.

I would be lying if I said there were things in terms of her care I wouldn’t change, but I don’t want the perfect to be the enemy of the good, and I’m lucky enough to be able to speak to the positives of our experience.

She spent a lot of her time in a specialist palliative care unit. Somewhere which was welcoming and spacious, with the most beautiful garden to look out on and spend time in.

If you were to look up kindness or heart or positivity in the dictionary there you would see all of the doctors and nurses we encountered.

They were always there. We never had to worry about that. We laughed and we shared fruit the children of one of the nurses had picked earlier that day. They genuinely brought us a lot of joy.

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged cancer, featured and health | 4 Comments

What’s on at Conference today?

By Caron Lindsay | Sat 16th March 2024 - 6:55 am

I’m writing this in my bed in York on Friday morning, propped up in bed with lots of plump and luscious pillow, a cup of Earl Grey at my side.

I arrived here on Thursday lunchtime and spent an enjoyable afternoon in the pub (me drinking tea I’ll have you know) with my friends.

In the evening we went to Toto’s the Italian near the Barbican. Eat there if you get the chance. The food was brilliant and the company stunningly good. I had prawns with avocado and Marie Rose sauce – a very generous portion – and then tagliatelle with a creamy salmon sauces. The Tiramisu was chocolate and creamy though I would have added more amaretto.

Afterwards back to the Mason’s Arms, traditionally Awkward Squad HQ and where 6 of us are staying. It was great to catch up with Our Hero of Rochdale Iain Donaldson and hear all the stuff about the by-election.

Generally the party is in good shape as we approach what might be our last Conference before the General Election. Rishi Sunak has ruled out 2 May, but not 9, 16, 23, etc etc. Honestly, I think most of us wish he’s just bloody get on with it.

We are anxious though. We know that so much brilliant work has gone into building extremely strong foundations in our target seats. We should do well. We know how important it is to get rid of the Conservatives. They are ruining our public services and doing all they can to make people suspicious of each other and worse.

The last thing we want is to wake up the morning after the election to another five years of their incompetence, disdain for ordinary people, division and lack of ideas. We will want to hear an inspiring melody that will attract voters to us.

Our slogan, For a Fair Deal, is not uniquely liberal and we need to have a key USP as part of our offer. It could go the way of Put Recovery First and end up being adopted by everyone and neutralised at the start of the campaign. People vote with their emotions and we need to give them some good ones.

Anyway, here’s what’s on today with a bit of added commentary. All details, including the text of motions are available here. I want to be in the hall at 4pm. It’ll be good:

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged featured | 10 Comments

Solving the crisis in Local Government

By Tony Vickers | Wed 13th March 2024 - 11:55 am

What’s the point of a Motion bemoaning a crisis but failing to suggest a solution?

Liberal Democrats have conferences to decide Party policy, not indulge in hand-wringing! Declaring that local government has a funding crisis without stating what we’d do about wastes our time and money as conference-goers. That’s why I’m asking for a reference back to FPC for F23 at York.

The Party last seriously debated local government and its funding in 1998 – the year I co-founded ALTER. We’ve progressed since then but in 2019 we funked the big one: reform of Council Tax.

In the 1998 policy paper the most significant citation was a 1996 House of Lords report that “demolished the circular argument” that local government expenditure is all part of national government expenditure, saying it’s “Humpty Dumpty” logic! Its only because Treasury says so and only because councils are over-controlled and haven’t in living memory had real freedom of action: “other economies can be successful while doing things differently” (4.1.5).

If we believe in devolution then what Whitehall compels councils to do, as minimum levels of statutory services, ought to be funded centrally – 100%, taking appropriate account of geographic and demographic differences in cost of delivering services. Councillors should only be held to account by local electors for how efficiently they use those external funds.

Anything that democratically elected councils decide to do in addition should be 100% funded from local taxes, set locally using their local choice of tax bases, as was decided by Conference in 1999.

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged featured, Local government and local government funding | 17 Comments

Conference Extra out – what’s missing?

By Caron Lindsay | Wed 13th March 2024 - 6:57 am

Conference Extra, the booklet containing all the amendments, emergency motions and questions to Committees, has now been published ahead of our Spring Conference in York this weekend. You can read it here.

The prize for the most direct question must surely go to Abrial Jerram, who asked Federal Conference Committee:

Please explain your selection of F23, Tackling the Funding Crisis in Local Government, given its lack of substance.

Tony Vickers will be writing more about that later today.

There is one thing missing, though. There won’t be the traditional emergency motions ballot, because only two emergency motions appear on the agenda. There is one on the death of Alexei Navalny and one on a fairer asylum system which is proposed by two key seat PPCs, Danny Chambers and Max Wilkinson.

The emergency motions debate takes place on Sunday morning.

All the papers for Conference can be found here.

Posted in News | 1 Comment

Important Federal and Scottish Conference deadlines coming up

By Caron Lindsay | Wed 28th February 2024 - 10:45 am

It’s just 16 days till Liberal Democrats gather in York for Spring Conference. Next Monday, 4th March, at 1pm, is a very important day as it is the deadline for submitting all sorts of things – questions to committees, amendments to motions and emergency and topical motions.

So what are all these things?

Questions to Committees – and the Leader

Each Federal Committee has an accountability session where it presents its report on what it’s been up to since the last Conference. This is an important chance for members to accept what it has been doing or not. It is rare that a report is rejected or amended, but it can be done. For example, back in 2021, the first attempt to streamline the Federal Board by sidelining half its members was overturned thanks to a clever member of the Awkward Squad.

If you want to know what the party’s committees are doing, you can submit a question by the deadline. So if you want to question the Board about how it’s implementing the strategy adopted by Conference, if you want to ask Federal People Development Committee about training, diversity or membership, or Federal Conference Committee about Conference or Federal Policy Committee about their work, get your question in.

There are usually more questions submitted than there is time to take. If it one of those chosen to be asked on the day, you will get the chance to ask a supplementary question in the hall. If it’s not asked in the hall, it will still be answered at a later date in writing in the report from Conference.

You can also question organisations like the Campaign for Gender Balance on their important work.

You can also put in a question to Ed for his leader’s q and a session on Saturday. Don’t, however, do what I did and forget that you have done it and head off for a nap so that you miss it being asked and getting the chance to ask a supplementary. I was kicking myself for that one.

Amendments

Posted in Op-eds | Leave a comment

Party awards – get your nominations in by 27 February

By The Voice | Wed 14th February 2024 - 9:47 am

Every Conference, the Liberal Democrats honour individuals who have served the party well with our party awards.

In York, the following awards will be presented:

The Leader’s Award
Eligibility: Any member of the party.

Criteria: Awarded to someone who has shown exemplary dedication to canvassing voters.

The Bertha Bowness Fischer Award
Background: This award is named for the country’s first woman to become a qualified election agent, a trailblazer who is a testament to our traditions of equality, inclusion and campaigning rigour.

Eligibility: Any local party.

Criteria: Awarded a local party for the excellence of its local delivery network.

The Albert Ingham Award
Background: This award is named for one of the Party’s great Election Agents, Albert Ingham. Albert’s work, much of it in his home county of Yorkshire, was prodigious and his impact on the Party ranged from organising to fundraising to promoting fresh talent.

Eligibility: Any election agent or campaign manager.

Criteria: Awarded for a recent campaign that through its excellence, fastidiousness, tenacity or novelty is a model for others.

The Laura Grimond award

Posted in News | Also tagged conference deadlines, deadlines and party awards | Leave a comment

Spring Conference Agenda and Directory now available – and a date for your diary

By The Voice | Tue 13th February 2024 - 4:15 pm

It’s less than 5 weeks till Liberal Democrats gather in York for what could, but possibly won’t be, the last Conference before the General Election.

The agenda and directory have now been published and you can read them here. We have been amusing ourselves seeing how many target seat PPCs we can see proposing or summating motions. We will see plenty more giving speeches across the weekend, too. It’s a real opportunity to show your potential constituents that you are supporting things that will make their lives better.

In his foreword, Ed Davey is keen to say how well we are …

Posted in News | 2 Comments

FCC report following the agenda selection meeting

By Nick Da Costa | Wed 31st January 2024 - 3:11 pm

The Federal Conference Committee met on Saturday to run through a number of items leading up to the Spring Conference in York, which is being held from 15 to 17 March 2023. 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 dates and venues for Autumn Conference.

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.

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, and some set-piece speeches.

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.

In total, we received 29 policy motions and one constitutional amendment. As regularly mentioned, time is tight at conference, and we are unable to take all motions submitted to Conference. Regarding the motions which were not selected, we have provided a summary of reasons why motions have not been submitted, and have provided further information to those people whose motions were not selected. I have tried to keep this succinct for the purposes of the list of motions.

Furthermore, I would also like to mention the drafting advice service that the Federal Conference Committee offers. This service is provided by the Committee to offer drafting and language advice on motions submitted to conference and cannot always cover advice on policy matters; I would, in these instances, recommend reaching out to members of the Federal Policy Committee, spokespeople, and party AOs, who may have people within the their groups with specific policy expertise and would be able to assist with formulating policy. If you also want to find out more about how to write policy, the FCC will be undertaking a training session at Conference on how to write a good conference, and this information will be published in the Conference Directory.

Posted in News | Also tagged featured | 7 Comments

ALDC’s By-Election report – 13 March 2025

Improving social care and attitudes to migrants

A distinctive defence niche for the Lib Dems to seize

What would Paddy do?

Tag Archives: 2024 spring conference

WATCH: Alistair Carmichael’s speech to Conference

Why we need good Cancer care

What’s on at Conference today?

Solving the crisis in Local Government

Conference Extra out – what’s missing?