Notes on Lib Dem Spring Conference 2012

Opening Rally

Tim Baron, Kirsty Williams and Simon Hughes featured. Failed to get over the reason why we should feel confident to go out recruiting in my opinion. The main driver seemed to be that we had achieved 75% of our policies in government.

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Friday evening Fringe

This was all about greater employee ownership - the future for the Uk Economy ? They had Norman Baker the new business secretary, someone from John Lewis and a speaker from a paper mill business who successfully sold to his employees. The sponsor of the event was the Baxi partnership which has moved on from making boilers and now promotes employee ownership. As employee involvement increases in an organisation productivity has been shown to go up. Any contraction or part closure becomes easier with elected employee owners reps on boards of companies. At each level of participation there is a benefit but ownership is best. John Lewis employees have pushed forward the need for the store to open later in the evening to convenience customers despite the disruption to the shift patterns. Even the newest recruit has ownership of the tidiness of the store.

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Saturday.

First Motion I attended was 'Giving Young People a Future'. (Developed from a policy paper on Combating Youth Unemployment). This has been implemented in part already by the Youth Contract costing £1bn and giving opportunities for half a million people. Infrastructure investment £30bn: Innovation Fund £10bn:163,000 Apprenticeships: one to one careers advice to those with special needs. Further polices meant more similar schemes and a greater role for Job Centre Plus to make it more welcoming and useful to young people: better careers advice in school.

Brian Paddick and Caroline Pedgeon gave a speech. Brian is standing for Mayor of London which now includes control of police in London. Caroline is a London Assembly Member and is standing to be Deputy Mayor.

The next debate was Making Tax Fairer. The basic premise of this motion was to tax the rich more and reduce the tax on the very poor. Many of these are already being implemented. Such as raising the tax free allowance,the bank levy, stopping the raising of inheritance tax threshold, increasing Capital Gains Tax rate. Need to boost economy to reduce deficit, partly by supporting small and medium companies. Other measures are

Mansion Tax 1% on homes over £2million

Further limits on tax relief into pension funds.

More work on tax avoidance, eg stamp duty.

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Lunch Time

The session I went to was about re-balancing the economy back to manufacturing. Speakers included Danny Alexander and Shirley Williams. The contention was to boost further the industrial base through new technologies such as wind farms and further build on exports to take up slack of 121,000 public sector job losses. Also to work with educational establishments to ensure correct skills are available and to encourage students to see technical and vocational work has equal value to Universities. Emphasis was on North East as it was this region's think tank hosting the event.

Regional growth fund working well, needed training boards back, Local Enterprise boards proving useful.

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The debate 'The Greenest Government Ever'

Like previous motions it acknowledges the good things achieved such as the 'Green Deal', 50% reduction in UK carbon emissions by 2025. 25% higher energy efficiency standards for all new buildings, green buses, subsidy for electric vehicles. The success of Cancun and Durban climate conferences.

There are a whole lot of other policies including:

- Develop low carbon infrastructure

- Push through transition to low carbon transport structure.

- Support low carbon technologies

- Protect the natural environment through planning and waste management.

- Acton at EU and and global level.

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Then there was a Q & A session with Nick Clegg. In this he was much more impassioned and able to explain better the thinking he had adopted in government and representing the party.

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Early evening fringe was the NEA - a campaigning group based in Newcastle that has been working for 30 years to remove fuel poverty. They work with local authorities to access grants to remove properties by comprehensive surveying. The main problem still exists with the private rented sector, where there are plans to insist the most poorly insulated homes are forcibly improved. The best way to achieve this is by working through a local council that is trusted by residents to give good advice.

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Green Liberal Democrats.

Ed Davey the climate secretary outlined the measures he is looking to to reduce climate change and meet energy needs. Nothing is ruled out. Aware as the transport infrastructure is developed as electric, electricity demand will rise. Also need to look to new technology use of waste heat to tackle space heating that is high despite insulation measures.

Also at meeting 'Good Energy' that works with all sort of micro generators and is exploring other ways of sourcing low carbon electricity..

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Sunday Morning.

There was a rush to reach the Sage before the end of the emergency debate. In the ballot by a narrow margin the motion that demanded the abandonment of the Health Bill was not chosen, instead Shirley Williams affirming debate was chosen. This gave an opportunity for the health issue to be debated.

Two lines were deleted from the Bill that meant that the affirming motion went through. The deleted lines urged Lib Dem peers to support the third reading of the Bill provided such further amendments are achieved, there being further safeguards over Foundation Trust behaviour.

Then Brian Paddick moved a motion on the Police that made sure that the police became better accepted by all the community. It also insisted that front line services should not be put out to private tender.

The next debate was on Civil Liberties that I only heard the end of. Basically this reaffirmed the good things the government has done in rolling back Labour's illiberal civil liberty policies. Further work needs to be done to protect liberty.

After the Appeal by the new Treasurer of the party and Tim Farron's goodbye's, Nick Clegg gave a relatively short speech. This was continuing the theme that we would continue to push through our ideas from the coalition agreement.

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Guy Fancourt

Conference Representative South West Wiltshire Constituency Party.