A complaint has been made by an individual about Ed Davey’s 2020 campaign’s use of data gathered in his 2019 leadership campaign for direct marketing.

The party has taken legal advice and received representations from the campaign. 

The UK has suffered a number of tragic terrorist attacks in recent weeks and months. The first duty of government is to protect people from this kind of violence, and Liberal Democrats will always work to ensure that our security services have the tools and resources they need to do their jobs.

This Bill would massively expand the Home Secretary’s power to impose Terrorism Prevention and Investigation Measures.

But we must also ensure that any new powers and legislation will be necessary, effective and proportionate to the threats we face.

That’s not the case when it comes to the Government’s new Counter-Terrorism and Sentencing Bill.

It would massively expand the Home Secretary’s power to impose Terrorism Prevention and Investigation Measures, or ‘TPIMs’, which can include curfews and electronic tagging.

Under existing powers, TPIMs can be imposed if the Home Secretary “is satisfied, on the balance of probabilities, that the individual is, or has been, involved in terrorism-related activity”.

However, the Government’s Bill would lower the standard of proof so she only needs to have “reasonable grounds for suspecting” such involvement.

Currently, a TPIM is imposed for one year and can only be extended once, so there is a two-year limit. But this Bill would allow the Home Secretary to extend TPIMs indefinitely, without any judicial oversight.

These changes would essentially mean a return to Control Orders, which were heavily criticised for getting the balance wrong between national security and civil liberties, and were replaced with TPIMs by the Coalition Government in 2011.

These changes have been heavily criticised for getting the balance wrong between national security and civil liberties.

Putting power in the hands of a single Minister to impose curfews and tagging with minimal evidence will do nothing to keep people safe, but will put the rights and freedoms of innocent people at risk.

That’s why the Liberal Democrats are opposing these changes when the Bill comes before the House of Commons today. We have tabled amendments to remove them from the Bill and keep the existing safeguards in place.

Liberal Democrats will always oppose unnecessary, authoritarian power-grabs like this and demand an effective, evidence-based approach to combating terrorism.

This watershed report confirms an alarming truth: this Conservative Government has failed to take the Russian threat to our democracy seriously, even despite the clear evidence they interfered to help Donald Trump to the presidency in 2016.

The PM must nannounce a wide-ranging investigation of potential Russian interference in our democracy

The first duty of government is to protect its citizens.

However, the Conservatives have been found asleep at their post with their failure to conduct an assessment of Russian interference in the 2016 Brexit referendum.

The protection of our democracy should never come second to the Tories covering their embarrassing connections to Russian oligarchs before an election.

Given what has come to light, Boris Johnson should think again about who his party takes money from and gives influence to.

Without delay, the Prime Minister must now announce a wide-ranging and properly funded investigation of potential Russian interference in our democracy, including the EU referendum and independence referendum.

The Federal Conference Committee met via Zoom call on Saturday, 11 July for the agenda selection for our first virtual conference. The meeting was a lengthy one, which was in part due to the large selection of varied motions we received, but also to give us breaks from staring at computer screens for a number of hours. 

As you will be aware, this year we will not be heading to the sunny beaches of Brighton, but instead you will be able to take part in Conference from your own home via our third party provider, Hopin. You will be able to find more information about the virtual conference https://www.libdems.org.uk/autumn-conference. 

The FCC wants to pay its thanks to the extraordinary efforts of the Conference Office team and members who have worked so incredibly hard to make our first virtual conference happen. It is been a long and challenging process, as we wanted to make sure that we are able to replicate – as much as feasibly possible – the physical conference for our members. I also understand that Glee will also be happening virtually; although we will not all be crammed into one room at the conference hotel to enjoy it. 

You will see from the timings of Conference that it is slightly different to the usual format, and we hope that this will give more people an opportunity to attend virtually. 

A total of nine conference motions (plus two emergency slots, two later deadline motions on COVID and Europe.) In addition we have reserved time for two consultation sessions as requested by the Federal Board and the Federal Policy Committee. 

The agenda will also include the Committee and Parliamentary reports, the Leaders Q&A and a number of Q&As and set-pieces set aside for Spokespeople and/or Leaders of the Welsh or Scottish Lib Dems. The full agenda will be published shortly. 

On the topic of motions selection we always receive a very large number of motions for selection at Conference, and unfortunately cannot always choose all of them for selection at Conference. This year we received 45 motions and have selected nine motions, plus the 4 emergency/later deadline motions mentioned above. 

Below I have included the selection grid of motions, and if they have been selected or not selected. You will see that some motions were selected but then eliminated at the second round which was due to time constraints. I have not included why the motion was not selected, this has been provided to the submitters of the motion. Please note that you can submit amendments to the motions by 14 September at 13:00 via the Conference Website. 

We’re putting the party back on track so we can achieve the sort of successes in future that we all so desperately want, and that our country needs.

Problems with the current way of doing things make it harder for us to win elections and to give members a real say in what happens. This was one of the major conclusions from the Dorothy Thornhill election review, which called for major improvements in how the party runs its own affairs.

At our meeting this weekend, the Federal Board (FB) therefore agreed three major steps forward.