The Federal Conference Committee (FCC) met on Saturday, 15th January to start its work on the final agenda for Spring 2022 Conference, which will be taking place virtually via the Hopin platform.

If you haven't yet registered for Conference, I would recommend doing so here.

We've had a few departures from the FCC in the last few months and welcomed two new members. Jennie Rigg ceased being the English Party's Representative to the FCC and Jenni Lang stepped down as the Scottish Party Representative after becoming the Convenor of the Scottish Liberal Democrats. I would like to place on record our thanks for their service to the FCC, they will be missed, and we would like to wish them all the very best for the future. We welcomed Matt McLaren as our new English Party Rep and Paul McGarry as our new Scottish Party Rep to the committee.

The headline "two new MPs so far in this Parliament" is a welcome one. Winning, especially winning with record swings, is what we all want.

Underneath the headline is a lot of hard work, plenty of tough decisions, and a drive to improve. We should all be thankful to our activists, staff and supporters.

With the average family facing an increase of £600 per annum or £12 a week in heating costs, Liberal Democrats in Torridge and West Devon have called on the Government to take immediate action to avoid a cost-of-living crisis and widespread hardship affecting local people this spring.

Stephen Middleton, Chair of Torridge and West Devon Lib Dems, said:

South Western ambulance response times for the most serious incidents increased to nearly 12 minutes in December. The service has the longest average response times in the country for both Category 1 and Category 2 calls, new Ambulance Service Statistics have revealed.

The statistics released by NHS England show that average wait times for the most serious incidents, such as cardiac arrest, have worsened in every region in England over the past month. Ambulance services across the country are failing to meet both the Category 1 and Category 2 callout times, highlighting the pressure the NHS is facing.

Devon Lib Dems have uncovered shocking figures that show that last year, over 100 Devon children at any one time were placed in care outside of the County, with some being sent hundreds of miles away.

The figures come after the revelation that a seven-year boy from Devon was placed at a special school in Surrey.

You may remember, last November, taking part in a survey on members' views on Brexit and the party's campaigning on the future of UK-EU relations. Thanks to everyone who participated - 6,500 members, more than any previous survey of this type - and thanks to Greg Foster and Dan Schmeising at party HQ who organised it on behalf of the Federal Policy Committee. This article gives you the results.

South Western ambulance service response times for the most serious incidents, e.g. cardiac arrest, have increased to 11m 38s in December compared to November, new Ambulance Service Statistics have revealed.

The statistics, released from NHS England, show that average wait times for serious incidents have worsened in every region in England over the past month, failing to meet both the Category 1 and Category 2 callout times.

After the disappointment and failure of the 2019 general election, an independent post-mortem was carried out into what went wrong. The findings of the Thornhill Review set a broad and challenging reform agenda for the party, which we've made good progress on implementing so far.

On the role of the Federal Board itself, the Thornhill Review found that:

FPC members started the year bright and early with our first meeting last week. We cancelled our December meeting so we could all focus on North Shropshire, so this was our first meeting since November.

Big areas of focus for FPC this year will be further work on our messages and key policies to support them, leading up eventually to the Manifesto for the next General Election; and our substantial programme of working groups developing policies in politically useful areas, to bring to autumn conference.

This week I have written to the Secretary of State for Energy Kwasi Kwarteng demanding that he backs the Liberal Democrat call for a "Robin Hood" tax on the super-profits of oil and gas firms, to raise money to support local families facing soaring energy costs.

The proposed one-off levy could raise over £5 billion to help support families in Mid Devon as their energy bills sky-rocket. The money raised through this "one-off" tax could fund a substantial package of emergency support to help thousands of people facing higher bills.