URGENT: Emergency motion to Spring Conference: Kickstarting economic growth

Below is the text of an Emergency Motion being submitted to Liberal Democrat Spring Conference – to support the motion, please fill in the form below

Emergency motion: kickstarting economic growth

Conference is concerned that the latest published figures show:

• low growth, as confirmed on February 27th 2013;
• negative net bank lending (especially by RBS and Lloyds), as confirmed on March 4^th 2013;
• and weak manufacturing confidence as announced on March 4^th 2013;

while real incomes are being squeezed for the fourth year in a row, with retail prices rising at 3.3% pa, more than twice as fast as average earnings at 1.4% as announced on February 12^th 2013.

While noting positive trends in employment and company start-ups, conference believes our economy continues to suffer in the wake of the disastrous banking crisis from a serious shortage of confidence and domestic demand, and therefore calls on Lib Dem ministers to show unity and resolve not only to reduce the structural deficit in the budget but to take radical action to get growth going again with a bold Plan A+ with these four pillars:

1.       Get the builders building.

2.       Get the banks lending to business.

3.       Prevent a slash and burn approach to public spending.

4.       Bring in the mansion tax.

Conference calls for:

a.       Loosening the straight jacket preventing public capital investment by government and councils and realising a once in a lifetime opportunity to invest using low interest rates

b.      A firm commitment to increase house building by at least 100,000 houses a year by 2015 including at least 50,000 more social homes by freeing councils and housing associations to borrow and build.

c.       Urgent action to step up lending to SMEs through the imposition of net lending targets on semi state owned banks as in the Coalition Agreement, including consideration of whether it is necessary to split them in to good and bad banks, and further development of the Business Bank and Green Investment Bank.

d.      Resisting pressures to agree to curbs on public spending beyond the lifetime of this parliament when this Coalition Government will be over

e.      Shifting the tax burden from hard earned income to wealth with a Mansion Tax of 1% a year on a property’s excess value over £2m to help lift the income tax threshold to £10,000