Humanist and Secularist Liberal Democrats

The Liberal Democrats have a new policy on state-funded faith schools - and it calls for the phasing out of faith-based selection over six years.

The policy was voted for by an overwhelming majority on Sunday 19th March 2017, at Federal Conference in York.

It largely brings together and updates existing policy, with two major changes being the focus of the debate:

While you're at Spring Conference, why not catch the Conference Rally on the Friday and then come to our fringe meeting on Faith Schools, Faith Admissions and Liberal Democracy, organised jointly with the Liberal Democrat Education Association.

It will be your chance to hear all sides of the discussion, and share your views, before the formal debate on faith schools.

HSLD's membership is set to hit a record level for the third year running.

January's Executive Committee meeting will hear a report that it stands at 159 members (148 current, 11 pending).

That puts us on course to achieve a total for our accounting year well up on the 148 for 2015-16 and 133 for 2014-15.

The 2016 Federal Elections results were announced on 17th December, and six of our members were successfully elected:

FEDERAL BOARD: Helen Flynn, Caron Lindsay and Gordon Lishman.

FEDERAL CONFERENCE COMMITTEE: Zoe O'Connell and Jennie Rigg.

Delegation to the ALLIANCE OF LIBERALS AND DEMOCRATS FOR EUROPE (ALDE): Peter Price.

[This article has been updated with the election results]

The 2016 Federal Elections took place in December, and we invited all HSLD members who are candidates in the elections to submit a statement of up to 250 words.

We received statements for the following elections:

• Federal Board
  • Helen Flynn [ELECTED], Caron Lindsay [ELECTED], Gordon Lishman [ELECTED]
• Federal Conference Committee
  • Zoe O'Connell [ELECTED], Jennie Rigg [ELECTED], Joe Otten,
• Federal Policy Committee
  • Michael Kilpatrick, Gordon Lishman [eliminated due to election to Federal Board]
• Delegation to the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe Party (ALDE)
  • Peter Price [ELECTED]

We learned this week of the loss of one of this group's founders, Mike Quinton. Mike died peacefully in a Lancaster nursing home on November 7, 2016, aged 85 years.

Mike did more than anyone else to organise the long-standing humanist and secularist tradition in the party into a recognised group, and he leaves as a legacy the longest established and arguably the most successful humanist group in any of the UK parties.

Candidates in the upcoming elections for the party's various Federal bodies who are also HSLD members are being invited to make a short statement which will go out to all our members and supporters.

We are also inviting all candidates for the Party Presidency to make a statement.

We'll aim to publish the statements on this website on Monday November 21.

We have two great events lined up for this month's Conference in Brighton .

It's not too late to register for conference and (if you're a party member) to vote in the debates so as to decide party policy.

We've lined up two great events for you this time, and we hope you'll be able to join us for them.

HSLD has just responded to the party's second "Agenda 2020" consultation.

The consultation covers a very wide range of policy areas, and we've focussed our response around two: "Should we be concerned about the effect of increasing faith school numbers on community cohesion? If so, what should we do about it?"

HSLD has called for the party's Constitution to be updated to refer explicitly to non-religious as well as religious belief.

Our response to the "Party Governance" consultation notes that there have been significant changes in how Liberal Democrats, society and the state recognise diverse faiths and non-religious beliefs since the party Constitution was first written, 27 years ago.