Broadland Lib Dems

Earlier this week, Liberal Democrat Leader Ed Davey called on the four governments of the UK to work together and agree on a set of unified guidelines that would work for families across the UK during the festive season.

We're glad to see that the UK leaders have listened to the Liberal Democrats' calls.

The recent contact tracing figures show that the current system is still woefully inadequate.

This is despite repeated calls for the Government to fix Test and Trace. The test, trace and isolate system is essential to not only slow the spread of coronavirus, but for people to have any hope of ever getting out of the Government's restrictions.

Hundreds of thousands of extra email addresses are being made available via the Lighthouse system. These are from people who have backed at least one of the party's national campaigns. The email addresses come with the necessary permissions to use them.

Previously, such email addresses were not shared with local parties. But this is changing as part of improvements to our use of data, helping grassroots campaigners.

Families across the UK have had an extremely difficult year being separated from their loved ones. They deserve a Christmas that is as normal as possible.

So far, Boris Johnson's government has been badly prepared and slow to act at every stage throughout the Covid-19 crisis. That can't happen again, especially for Christmas.

In response to the report to Norfolk County Council's cabinet meeting on 2 November 2020 on the Council's response to Covid 19 - initial lessons learnt, Liberal Democrat Group leader, Steff Aquarone said -

"We are really disappointed by this report as the County Council continues to do more navel gazing on Covid 19. County Councillors need to hear feedback from the experiences of people across society in Norfolk- not just public sector officials, no matter how hard they're working.

This is why the Liberal Democrats have consistently called for an independent local enquiry - like the one we persuaded the Government to do, but specifically for Norfolk. National partners are already benefiting from the lessons learned in the first wave - why are Norfolk Tories so insistent they don't want to listen to those people who were directly affected and have dealt with Covid first hand?

This committee knows that to get ourselves back to winning ways, we need to be ambitious going forwards and honest about the recent past.

In that vein, this month we discussed the internal investigation we commissioned into the Liberal Democrat response to the Unite to Remain campaign, and its structural and electoral implications for the Party.

Welcome to the Weekly Whip. Your one-stop shop for Lib Dem Parliamentary updates, covering the week that was and the week to come.

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Weekly Whip w/c 19th October

Monday 19th October

Before we moved onto the main business of the day, we had two Ministerial Statements.

If ever there was a time for us to act in support of Hong Kongers, it is now.

Many Hong Kongers have suffered grave persecution at the hands of the Chinese Regime.

With repeated reports of police brutality, the UK has a moral and legal duty to stand with Hong Kongers and ensure no one is left behind to suffer under the Chinese Communist Party.

Despite the massive effort people have made to fight coronavirus it's clear that the road to recovery is going to be rockier than we first feared.

With millions of workers worried about their livelihoods, the British people deserve a Government that listens to their concerns and does everything in its power to protect them. Sadly, this isn't the case.

The Care Act 2014 makes it clear that local authorities must provide or arrange services that help prevent people from developing care and support needs, or at the very least attempt to delay the deterioration that leaves people dependent on care.

Yet once again, Norfolk Conservatives are proposing to slash social care budgets: next year another £17 million is planned to be cut, meaning social care is again shouldering nearly half of the council's overall cuts.