Tag Archives: lib dem conference

Nick Da Costa

FCC report following agenda selection meeting

By Nick Da Costa | Wed 29th January 2025 - 9:55 am

The Federal Conference Committee met on Saturday to run through a number of items leading up to Spring Conference in Harrogate, which is being held from 21 to 23 March 2025. This will be our first return to Harrogate in almost 16 years. 

We had a large number of items submitted to Conference, in addition to report backs to the Committee from our Constitutional & Standing Orders Working Group.

We are delighted that so many people have already registered for Conference and we encourage any members who have not yet signed up to Conference to do so via: LINK

We aim to publish the agenda in the next couple of weeks.

The upcoming deadlines are: 

Amendments and Emergency motions drafting advice deadline – 13:00 on 24 February 2025

Amendments and Emergency motions deadline – 13:00 on 10 March 2025

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 or third rounds when we then started to look at reducing timings. 

As regularly mentioned, time is tight at conference, and especially this Spring Conference. There are a number of items that the Federal Conference Committee has very little control over, which we are forced to take at Conference. This signficantly reduces the time available at Conference for Policy Motions. For example, the FCC has to take Constitutional Amendments and Standing Order Amendments if they are ‘in order’ and thus have little leeway on rejecting these in order to allow more time for policy debates. Furthermore, we have a number of items (including one constitutional amendment) which the Committee felt needed a reasonable time to debate at Conference, and thus this also reduces the time available. 

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 policy motion, and this information will be published in the Conference Agenda and Directory. 

From the motions submitted, we selected: five policy motions and four constitutional amendments. The committee went through various rounds of selection, and it is always a very challenging decision to select which motions should or should not be added to the agenda. I would like to thank the staff who attended the full-day meeting and also the members of the committee for their contributions and hard work.

I have included the list of motions submitted, including the names of the motions and if selected/not selected and the brief reasons for non-selection, please note that some of the names of motions may vary between now and the publishing of the agenda. 

We are looking forward seeing you at Conference, and if you have not yet had a chance to register, please do so via https://www.libdems.org.uk/conference

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So many turns

By Glee Club Comperes | Sun 8th September 2024 - 2:28 pm

For around 50 years, the Glee Club has been a highlight of Conference for many people. (There’s no specific anniversary; Glee evolved out of various informal singing traditions but is around 50 years old now). The stage has welcomed leaders, candidates, Ministers and even the occasional broadcaster or two.

One of the enduring traditions is that newly elected MPs ‘do a turn’ and sing or otherwise entertain those present. After a period of no new MPs, followed by a period of no Conferences for them to honour the tradition, this year our cup is overflowing as we welcome our biggest ever new intake.

Some will get up and sing their favourite song from the Liberator Songbook. (Risking a record number of renditions of “The Land”).

Some will tell jokes. Some have done sketches. It has been known (though not always recommended) for them to write their own songs. Others will attempt to emulate the late Paddy Ashdown’s unique shaggy dog story about two tribes. Leaders were sometimes “more singed against than singing”. There may be other talents as yet unearthed; we have musicians, child actors and who knows what else?

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Michael Kilpatrick

More flexible debates at Conference

By Michael Kilpatrick | Wed 4th October 2023 - 10:25 am

Following my earlier article about my thirty-second speech at the recent Autumn Conference, I wanted to share some thoughts on the conduct of our debates. On two occasions now I have submitted Speaker’s Cards offering to speak for either thirty or sixty seconds and I was called on both occasions. However, a member of Federal Conference Committee informed me that other members have done likewise in the past but have then spoken for considerably longer – somewhat an abuse of the Chair’s trust. I have only heard from one other party member who has spoken briefly after volunteering such, so it’s definitely not the norm. On the whole, members speak for three minutes and many of them overrun (I hasten to add that I wouldn’t wish to be unreasonable by criticising nervous first-time speakers for overrunning).

What is so magic about three minutes? Nothing, it’s arbitrary. So why do we have such a rigid structure and why do only a few debates, usually only the longer ones, include the short interjections from the floor microphone? Isn’t that back to front? Surely the shorter debates – some only thirty minutes – would benefit more from more speakers speaking for a shorter time in order to ensure a variety of views?

Why instead don’t we have a system in which Speaker’s Cards for *all* our debates, long or short, allow applicants to offer to speak for either three minutes or, say, ninety seconds and for that individual requested limit then to be enforced by the Chair? Not everything that needs to be said needs to fill three minutes for the sake of it. Conversely long, technical arguments may sometimes be difficult to compress into three minutes. Let’s have more flexibility, please. On the practical issues, I think the loss of time caused by speakers approaching and leaving the podium isn’t a big deal and if it were, more use could be made of the floor microphone for any shorter speeches.

This flexibility of speaking time was the reason for my attempted Reference Back to motion F34 “Standing Order Amendment: Speaker Card Selection” the other week. I was hoping the mini-debate would allow me to suggest more variable speaking times and that FCC might endorse such an idea. In all honesty, I hadn’t prepared this properly, nor submitted a Speaker’s Card. What’s more, F34 had been on the agenda for the cancelled 2022 Autumn Conference and the idea I have just presented here originated back then. I only have myself to blame for doing nothing about this in the interim.

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