ALTER in Government!
ALTER Chair Tony Vickers was among over 2000 Lib Dems at the Special Federal Conference of Lib Dems in Birmingham on Sunday 16th May 2010 - a date for the history books, as the first appearance of a Liberal Cabinet Minister before a Party Conference for some 75 years.
As the first (Danny Alexander) said: "There'll be another coming along in a minute!" We actually heard from four of the five, three of whom are either President of ALTER (Chris Huhne) or Vice-President (Vince Cable, then Nick Clegg to conclude the event).
The conference debated just one Motion which, as amended, can be found on the Party website in full. According to Party President Baroness Ros Scott, the big disappointment of many was the lack of an amendment dealing with Site Value Rating (she was joking, unfortunately!).
Although ALTER's Executive Committee, meeting three days earlier, decided not to attempt an amendment to the Motion at all, Tony Vickers did submit a speakers card. Like 76 of the 118 cards submitted, it was not called. However Tony's prepared script, calling for the Party to use the Coalition Agreement's promise of a review of local government finance to develop Party policy again urgently - in the light of our new national tax policy and manifesto downgrading of the commitment to Local Income Tax - can be downloaded (below) from this site.