The one opposed by the party leadership was the push by Evan Harris and the Social Liberal Forum to get a health motion restored to the conference agenda. There will be both a Q&A session and a “topical discussion” slot, but they also wanted a conventional motion and vote. Despite a rather poor speech from Simon Hughes opposing this attempt, it failed to get the necessary two-thirds majority. The point though has still been made – and many Liberal Democrat peers will take it as a clear sign that they should stick to their guns in pushing for further amendments to the health bill as it goes through conference.

Peers featured in another rebellion, albeit one that was talked about rather than present at conference. For a group of Lib Dem peers actually oppose the government’s plans to introduce elections for the House of Lords, starting in 2015.

Saturday afternoon’s motion on Lords reform saw a particularly powerful intervention from former party leader Ming Cambpell, whose constituency is the successor to that held by Asquith, Liberal leader when the party secured the first major round of Lords reform a century ago. He bluntly told conference that he could not see how a Liberal Democrat could oppose elections and that, in the words of Nelson, they should do their duty to the country.

That is a theme I returned to in my own speech in the debate, pointing out that there is a clue in the party’s name. We are not the Liberal Hereditaries or the Liberal Appointees For Life, but the Liberal Democrats.

Yet there is a benefit for the party leadership in the resistance of some Lib Dem peers. Political pundits go on endlessly about how leaders should have “Clause 4 moments” when they pick a fight with parts of their own parties. In this case, the reluctant peers have handily offered themselves up in opposition to Nick Clegg and democrats, providing an easy route for the Deputy Prime Minister to garner the benefits of a Clause 4 moment without its usual pains.

It features The Three Doctors: Owen, Harris and Who.

The next will be a post-Nick Clegg conference speech edition, with the full text of his speech and post-speech analysis.

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Cross-posted from the MHP Communications blog:

The plan for the party’s autumn conference was straight-forward: talk up the party’s achievements in getting the Health and Social Care Bill changed, have a question & answer session to let people discuss but not disrupt the revised legislation and move on to talk about other issues.

That plan has been under assault, however, from health rebels within the Liberal Democrats who do not believe the changes have gone far enough.  Spear-headed by Shirley Williams and Evan Harris they have been pressing for further changes, with a debate at conference being the method to deliver them.

The initial attempt at getting a health motion on the agenda was rebuffed by the party’s Federal Conference Committee (FCC), given the presence of the Q&A session on the agenda anyway. So now Harris and co are both pressing ahead with an appeal against the decision, threatening to try to overturn the decision with a vote on the FCC’s report at conference and also putting in an emergency motion on the topic. Emergency motions then get put in a ballot where conference representatives vote to pick which one(s) to debate.

Readers whose eyes are glazing over at the triple procedural assault risk missing the bigger picture – these sorts of procedural details are the ways in which major government policy gets shaped in the world of a coalition government involving a party which still has meaningful internal democracy for its policy processes. And the details don’t stop there…

The most likely outcome at this stage looks to be the emergency motion route. It lets the FCC stick to its agenda guns, it avoids a vote on overturning its decision (a risky proposition for the health rebels to push as that would require a two-thirds majority and could cause significantly practical organisational problems) and it puts the onus back on the rebels to win the emergency motions ballot to get the motion debated. It also allows opponents of the rebels to quietly amass votes for other motions in the ballot (such as on the London riots), which could make for some interesting voting patterns…

But the downside? If the health motion won through on the emergency motions ballot, it would get debated on the Wednesday of party conference – just before Nick Clegg’s keynote speech and to a roomful of journalists desperately looking for something interesting to say about a party leader’s conference speech.

I’m not half looking forward to conference.

UPDATE: Ah, there was another procedural option I didn’t mention and lo… that is the one that has been picked by the party’s senior figures: there will be one of the topical disucssions without a vote on health. That then gives a solid defence against letting either the original motion or the emergency motion on to the agenda – all while avoiding a potentially confrontational vote.

At the heart of the likely changes is the role of Monitor, the proposals for which Paul bluntly said were got wrong first time round. Though he was careful not to directly criticise Andrew Lansley, he did say that the original proposals for Monitor were to adopt the model of regulator used with privatised utilities and apply that to the NHS – and (unmentioned by Paul) Andrew Lansley was previously a civil servant who worked closely on such regulatory plans. The implicit message was that Lansley took a model he was used to and wrongly tried to apply it to the NHS.

Altering the role of Monitor to emphasise integration and collaboration could tackle many of the fears of fragmentation and privatisation, depending on how the details are worked out. Paul Burstow put forward a very upbeat case for this, pointing out how changes in the Bill would in fact end the sort of private provision brought in by Labour that had resulted in private firms being paid for work they did not do.

Paul Burstow gave credit to the spring conference motion in helping to trigger changes to the NHS plans – and was refreshingly frank in saying that what the party is doing in government is changing as a result of the conference vote. I’ve heard many an MP in the past argue for reasons to side-step or ignore or side-line a conference vote; there was none of that from Paul.

The other key influence on the shape of the final plans that he mentioned was the widespread consultation within the health service and with related charities and similar organisations. With over 200 consultation events held in the last six weeks, it is hard to see how the final plans can be ones which do not reflect the widespread views within the health service.

Paul Burstow talked about how the plans for GP commissioning are likely to change, with tighter rules around transparency and more involvement of lay members, including a lay chair for the GP commissioning bodies. As I mentioned in my question to him, the risk is that we end up with PCTs being recreated by the back-door, but Paul was optimistic that the new arrangements would be a substantial improvement on the extremely patchy PCT record due to the central involvement of GPs. In addition, GPs would not  be able to delegate commissioning decisions to others, such as external private firms. Commissioning will stay in the hands of accountable public bodies.

Given Paul’s long standing interest in social care, it was no surprise that he also stressed the importance to him – and in the Bill – of integrating health and social care and of giving local government the key role in promoting public health.

The questions at the end showed a fair degree of scepticism of the plans so far, though many people commented afterwards how impressed they were that Paul took the time to answer every question from someone in the room.

Perhaps the best of those was from a member who admitted they aren’t an expert in the NHS and therefore looks to the views of figures they trust to help judge a policy. So his question was “Will Evan Harris be happy with the changes to the NHS White Paper?” In reply, Paul Burstow pointed out that he had to keep many people happy – including also Shirley Williams – but he expected Evan to be happy with most of the changes. I’m sure Evan will tell us if that turns out to be wrong…

One of YouGov’s post-Royal Wedding questions was about Royal primogeniture and found overwhelming backing for the change:

Currently male children of the monarch take precedence over female children in terms of the succession. Do you think men and women should be treated equally in the line of succession to the throne?

Should 76%
Should not 14%
Don’t know 10%

A slightly different question last year found 70% backing the proposed reform.

There was also support, if not as strong, for removing the bar on Catholics from the monarchy (43%-36% with 21% don’t knows).

Having been responsible for (along with Ashley Lumsden and Martin Tod) the first candidate website in the UK to take credit card donations, it’s an area I’ve been involved in and watching closely for a long time. Regular readers of this site, for example, will have often seen me talk in the past about some of the differences in politics and culture between the US and Britain which help explain these different fundraising experiences, such as the way in the US people often given money when in the equivalent scenarios in the UK they give time.

Twice my views on this topic have been dented – once by Boris Johnson’s bid for London Mayor with its impressive online fundraising and once by Evan Harris, whose constituency campaign in 2010 raised over £6,000 online.

And now there is a third dent, and on the three dents and you’re out basis that’s time to revise some of my views.

Impressive online fundraising by Yes to Fairer Votes

This third dent comes courtesy of the Yes2AV campaign and its successful online fund-raising. Yes to Fairer Votes raised over £35,000 from 1,400 individuals in small online donations over the last week, bringing its total from online donations to over £150,000 from just under 5,000 individuals. The average online contribution is £27.05.

With direct mail and telephone fundraising raising approaching £100,000, that is nealry £250,000 raised – of which the majority has come online.

The size of the donor base compares very well to only around 1,000 donors to the No campaign (based on what they published a couple of weeks ago) and it looks to be coming from genuinely cross-party sources, again in contrast to the No campaign which is 90% funded by Conservative donors.

So three dents and I’m out. Time to revise my views on online political fundraising. Those lessons can be digested later, but in the meantime, don’t forget that what matters in the end is votes in the ballot box – so if you haven’t already, do get in touch with your local party about Yes campaigning or visit www.yestofairervotes.org.

Both Lynne Featherstone and Evan Harris have previously pushed for the rules of royal succession to be changed to remove the precedence given to males over females. As Lynne has put it previously, the monarchy is about symbolism – so it should have the right symbolism. Now Nick Clegg is also on the case: “Mr Clegg, who is responsible for constitutional reform, told the BBC the issue would “require careful thought”. But he said both he and David Cameron were “sympathetic” to changing rules which seemed “a little old fashioned”.” (BBC).

Government bans export of three more lethal injection drugs to the US.

Tory troubles in Bedford: “Senior Tory backs independent against his own party’s candidate: Kempston Conservatives have backed an independent candidate who is standing for election to Borough Hall – 18 months after she was expelled from the party, and despite the fact that she is standing against two party members” (Bedford Today)

Lib Dem councillor switches to the Conservatives in Rochdale, whilst Welsh Lib Dems have a proof-reading problem.

In a smart move, which reinforces how the Social Liberal Forum is becoming one of the party’s key pressure groups, the SLF is hosting an online petition from the movers of the Sheffield Conference health amendment. The petition calls for the NHS plans to be changed in order to:

a) ensure the Health Secretary has a duty to provide a fully comprehensive and free health service, with no gaps and no new charges
b) provide more local democratic accountability for the health service
c) curb the market obsession of the proposed reforms to prevent quality being relegated behind price and prevent the cherry-picking of profitable services by the private sector undermining and fragmenting existing provision
d) slow down the pace of change so that the NHS, facing its toughest settlement for decades, does not implode from the stress of another massive reorganisation

Former MP and one of the main campaigners on this issue, Evan Harris, has said to The Observer:

This list of amendments is the minimum needed to satisfy the requirements of Lib Dem policy as set out in the coalition agreement and the recent conference motion, and this will be an essential guide to Lib Dem MPs, the leadership of the party, and indeed the Conservatives of what needs to change.

The Liberal Democrats do not expect their MPs to vote down the bill, but will not accept our parliamentarians being whipped to vote against any of the necessary amendments needed to provide democratic accountability of GP-led commissioning, guarantee the comprehensive nature of the NHS and rein in the original plans for an NHS market.

A widely-supported petition is likely to make the prospect of whipping MPs to vote against a conference decision on a topic that wasn’t in the coalition agreement even more unlikely.

So it is good news for both our freedoms and Tom’s reputation that the Bill published today proposes major reforms and has met with a warm response, including:

Major changes to Britain’s antiquated defamation laws will be outlined by ministers today with the publication of a bill to provide greater protection for free speech and an end to “libel tourism”. (The Independent)

Three cheers for libel reform bill … Now, at last, we face the possibility of the libel law being genuinely reformed. (Roy Greenslade in The Guardian)

At first glance the content is encouraging. There is a “substantial harm test” and a “Reynolds” type public interest defence for responsible publications. There will also be curbs on “libel tourism” and an end to jury trials, unless the Court orders otherwise. And, at last, there will be a single publication rule, which means that a web page is not held to have been “published” each time it is downloaded. (David Allen Green)

The Libel Reform Campaign welcomes the government’s draft defamation bill as a good step in the right direction – but Parliament needs to go further in key areas … Dr Evan Harris of the Libel Reform Campaign: “Those campaigning for libel reform will want to see cross-party recognition that the draft bill is a welcome step forward, but also that it does not yet reflect the extent of full libel reform that is required to properly protect free expression.” (Index on Censorship)

Final result – both amendment and motion passed overwhelmingly. The overall tenor of the debate was more good natured than might have been expected – people did not take the opportunity to express any unhappiness in strident tones, and the party being in coalition with the Tories until 2015 was accepted and expected, explicitly or implicitly, by all speakers. Tuition fees and NHS got mentions, but brief ones. Norman Lamb’s comments about the health debate (see below), however, were unexpected and welcome.

James Gurling, giving the final speech in the debate, ends with the line, “No pacts, no deals – just Liberal Democracy”.

As is often the case in such debates, the importance of liberalism has been mentioned frequently but both Evan Harris near the start of the debate and David Abrahams towards the end mentioned the importance too of the party’s social democratic heritage, pointing out how much poorer the party would be without the contributions of people such as Shirley Williams.

Tim Farron’s speech was good, but… it was rather like a Christmas repeat special, with the best lines from his previous speeches at Sheffield conference. Emphasises importance of effective campaigning; “we will not define ourselves by passing conference motions”.

Norman Lamb’s contribution to the debate emphasised that last year’s special conference was not a one-off agreement on coalition, but rather there needs to be ongoing involvement of the party in the working of coalition. “The party needs to be fully engaged” in drawing up the policy programme for the second half of the Parliament, and he promises that future major new policies that fall outside the coalition agreement must go through the party’s democratic processes.

Norman Lamb also makes very emollient comment about NHS debate yesterday – saying such a debate should never have to happen again as in future party should not have to debate a major departure from coalition agreement after, rather than before, the event.

In his speech, Simon Hughes talked about the benefits of being in power – the way that party members can influence government decision making and the way that it provides an opportunity to reach out to new audiences. (As an aside, that helps explain why the party’s fundraising is doing well and the next budget forecasts very strong results from larger donors.) Calls for a “closing [of] the gap between the rich and the poor”. Party should still aim to replace Labour as the radical alternative to the Tories.

Suzanne Fletcher from Stockton called for better information to be available about what the party is doing in government and why – and got a very warm response (and not just from the Lib Dem Voice team for her namecheck for the site).

Series of speeches calling for the party to be distinctive, but none criticise the party being in coalition and many praise the coalition agreement’s content. That’s been a consistent them through conference – plenty of calls for things in government to be done differently, but coming out of coalition isn’t one of them.

Former MP David Rendel: “Our party’s policy is still to abolish tuition fees … and we should not be afraid to say so”.

David Matthewman is providing a detailed commentary on the debate on Twitter.

The amendment, accepted by the movers of the motion, calls for a review of the party’s triple lock arrangements with any proposals for change to be put to the party’s autumn conference. In moving the amendment, Evan Harris both made the point that the Federal Policy Committee is not formally involved in the triple lock, even though policy is at the heart of post-election negotiations. That proposal is a good one (for the reasons I outlined in Wanted: one party locksmith).

As Gordon Lishman moves the party strategy motion the conference hall is reasonably full, but even allowing for it being a Sunday morning, it is not as full as it would be if people were expecting a contentious debate. Issues about party independence and no pre-election deals are important, but there’s unlikely to be much of a showing for any views disagreeing with those in the motion.