These have been hard times for us all.

Covid has dominated our lives over the past year; Personally, professionally, politically.

Covid has dominated our lives over the past year; Personally, professionally, politically.

We have all needed to find extra resilience, additional emotional resources, extra bandwidth in our efforts to get through these times. A year when we lost people. When people lost jobs and livelihoods. When loneliness became an even bigger killer and when Welsh small businesses were brought to their knees.

But Wales is a resilient nation. Welshness through the centuries has been more than just a political or legal identity. It has been a way of life, a state of mind. Our community spirit has inspired the greatest social reformers who have transformed Britain.

Covid-19 has wrought havoc on our small businesses, employees and self-employed people across the country.

The Government has hung millions of small-business owners and the self-employed out to dry.

More than three million people have been completely excluded from the Government’s income support scheme.

They’ve had to struggle through this pandemic with no support.

It’s just not good enough.

This week the Conservative Government published their Integrated Review of Security, Defence, Development and Foreign Policy. The Government’s priorities set out in this Review are full of hubris and broken promises.

The Prime Minister has said the Government is “standing up for our values”. Yet, the Review shows the Government reneging on commitments to help the world’s poorest while increasing spending on nuclear warheads, putting economic ties before human rights, drastically cutting our armed forces to fill Defence Budget black holes, failing to take decisive action on China and Russia and ignoring the need to rebuild cooperation with the EU.

We are fighting for a UK that stands for liberal, internationalist and compassionate values on the world stage.

The Integrated Review is not strategic, not integrated and not a proper review. It isn’t even conclusive, finishing by saying that it will be followed by “further strategies”.

This week Liberal Democrat MPs will vote against the protest crackdown law.

The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill is a mammoth 300 page piece of legislation.

The Conservatives’ plans to crackdown on protests are dangerous and draconian.

There are some measures in the Bill that the Liberal Democrats support – such as the Police Covenant to make sure officers get the support they deserve, and changes to rules on disclosing criminal records to help with rehabilitation.

But other parts of the Bill are extremely concerning.

We are looking forward to welcoming members to our second online conference next week.

We have a packed agenda of debates, fringes, training and exhibition stands as well as the opportunity to catch up with friends and colleagues.

Already we have a large number of party members registered to attend. You can join them here. Attending conference is a great part of being a member of the Liberal Democrats. You can vote on our policies, question our Party Leader, Parliamentarians and committee chairs and make your voice heard in how we run our party.

Federal Conference Committee met today to make the final preparations for conference. We selected a number of amendments to debate to the various policy motions that we will be discussing. Over the next couple of days, committee members will be getting back to the successful and unsuccessful proposers of amendments to let them know the reasons for our decisions.

We have selected a motion on the COVID-19 pandemic for the slot at F14. That will be amendable and we will get the text of it out as fast as we can.

We also received a number of emergency motions for consideration. Given the number that were in order, we do not think that we need to have a ballot but rather can debate them in the time we have. The text of those will be released soon.

We will be issuing a new and integrated version of the Agenda early next week. It will contain details of all the amendments we have selected, emergency motions to be considered, questions that will be answered and other updates. In order to make it more user-friendly on screen, we will be not be issuing a separate Conference Extra as we would have done before – all of the information will be in one place.

We recognise that there have been some delays in issuing the printed copy of the conference papers for those that ordered them. We apologise for that. They have now all been sent out.

I look forward to seeing you all this week for our Spring Conference 2021!

Geoff Payne

Chair, Federal Conference Committee