This week is Transgender Awareness week, and if you haven't had a chance to read my blog on the importance of supporting and standing alongside our transgender friends and colleagues, you can read it here: libdems.org.uk/trans-rights-are-human-rights.

Transgender and intersex communities are too often marginalised, and many forget that in the fight for equality, trans rights are human rights. We must, and we are, endeavouring to ensure that a vulnerable group of people are able to live as they are entitled to under our laws.

Across the Atlantic, Trump and his cronies are doing their very best to rewrite the definition of transgender out of existence. An agenda of social cleansing that feeds into his administration's insular and antagonistic narrative. We may like to think that Trump's views are in isolation, that his fear of difference does not seep to our shores, but it does.

Jeremy Corbyn was asked "If you could stop Brexit, would you?"
His response?
"We can't stop it. The referendum took place. Article 50 has been triggered."

But Brexit can be stopped through a People's Vote

Vince Cable

This demonstrates, if proof were needed, that Jeremy Corbyn is working hand in glove with the Conservatives to deliver their ideological Brexit.

Today, Jo Johnson quit as a Conservative government minister over the Brexit deal Theresa May is putting together - a deal which gives people the worst of both worlds.

The choice being presented to the British people is no choice at all.

Jo Johnson MP

In his resignation statement, Johnson said that the deal being concocted will inflict "serious economic and political harm on the country". He said what is happening is not what anyone wants and the 2016 referendum did not provide any mandate for it.

20 years ago today the Human Rights Act became law, incorporating the European Convention on Human Rights into UK law.

The Liberal Democrats had been campaigning for the Human Rights Act ever since we were founded, but our fight to protect people's rights and freedoms didn't end when it passed...

Conservative and Labour MPs consistently vote for illiberal new laws that curtail civil liberties.

'The Tory Concept of 'Purple Tuesday' (to be next Tuesday 13th November 2018), "the UK's first accessible shopping day" is all very well and good but it does not recognise that, for a disabled person, being able to actually ENTER a shop is the end of the story, not the start.

Until Disabled People are able to gain accessible and equal employment so we are able to earn as much as non-disabled people to spend on Purple Tuesday, we are not equal.

We are pleased to announce that the following members, are going to be the new LDDA executive from 1st January 2019. The period of office is two years.

Co Chairs:- Gemma Roulston and Phil Stevens

Secretary:- Victoria Evans

Treasurer:- Maureen Rigg

Membership Secretary:- Claire Roulston

Ordinary members of the executive:- Poppy Hasted, Jemma Charlton, Avril Coehlo and Matthew Clark.

Lord Rennard has written the foreword for a paper 'Action on Delayed Transfer of Care' produced by the British Healthcare Trades Association (BHTA). The paper has been sent to MPs and peers most closely associated with health and disability issues as well as relevant Ministers and civil servants.

One of the issues identified in the paper is how delays in the provision of suitable equipment can mean that too many patients are made to stay in hospital for far longer than necessary. Integrating properly the health and care services is seen as essential to reduce what is commonly known as 'bed blocking'.

Leicester City Council have recently opened a Consultation concerning its Independent Living Support (ILS Supported Housing Services.

Further details can be found in the link below:

https://consultations.leicester.gov.uk/communications/proposedchangestotheilssupportedhousingservice/

Local MP Tim Farron says the Health Secretary has added insult to injury by refusing to rule out making further cuts to Cumbria's already underfunded public health budget. Due to significant cuts made previously by the Government, Cumbria currently only spends £75,000 a year on tier 1 mental health preventative care, working out at just 75p per child.