ALTER's plans for Autumn Party Conference

ALTER's Executive Committee has agreed the wording for a Motion to be submitted for debate at the Party's main Conference this autumn in Birmingham. Entitled...

Shifting Taxes to Promote Economic Growth

...it seeks to stregthen the Party's radical, progressive and green credentials and promote a distinct identity. ALTER Chair Dr Tony Vickers said after the meeting: "I would like to think that some Tories would support the Motion, because it accords with the sentiments of Chancellor George Osborne in the first Coalition Government Budget for a 'growth led economic recovery'. However we know, from discussions with Treasury officials recently, that the dominant force in the Conservative Party - which runs the Treasury - is still those descendents of landlordism: banks and property 'investors'. They will never support a tax on land values, because it would stop them creating unearned profits from economic rent."

ALTER will be reaching out to environmentalists and social liberals at Birmingham, with a Fringe meeting exploring the idea in a new book by Julian Pratt: Stewardship Economy - private property without private ownership. The book updates ideas that have their roots in Biblical times, taking account of Climate Change and other aspects of humanity's interaction with the natural world, to reconstitute the scope of political economy in a green framework. We hope to co-host the event with the Green Lib Dems.

The venue and speakers will be confirmed soon. Chris Huhne, ALTER's Vice President, has been invited to chair the fringe meeting. The Chief Executive of the conservation charity Wildwood Trust, Peter Smith, has also been invited to both speak at the event and write a leaflet in ALTER's 'conference flyer series on Environment.