Federal Committees report to each Conference. It’s an important way for members to hold them to account. Conference votes on whether to accept or reject each report. You can read the reports here.  Members can also ask questions which need to be submitted here by 1pm on 8th September.  We’ll be looking at what they say. 

Our next stop on our meander through the agenda is the Federal Policy Committee report written by vice chairs Jeremy Hargreaves, Lucy Nethsingha and Helen Morgan MP.

They set out what the Committee has been doing during the past year including the policy review chaired by the Young Liberals’  and Women Lib Dems’ Eleanor Kelly, which will be voted on separately at Conference. Other policy papers to be debated at the Conference are on climate change and opportunity and skills.

Two working groups set up by FPC earlier this year, on mental health and town centres and high streets have consultation sessions at this Conference.

They also report on recruitment for further working groups on Defending Democracy and Primary Healthcare, international security and re-invigorating the economy.

FPC has also been reviewing how it operates, particularly with relation to diversity:

We want to ensure our processes are as efficient and powerful as possible, and we have recently had some discussions about how we can optimise some of the ways we work, drawing especially on views from participants in recent working groups. As a result we are developing a refreshed approach for the way working groups do their work. We are also keen to ensure we promote racial diversity effectively, including through the participation of party members from racially diverse backgrounds in our working groups, as well as re-invigorating our process for feeding in equality impact assessments to their work. We particularly want to ask all readers to encourage party members from under-represented groups to apply for working groups.

The report concludes with information on how it keeps up with topical developments and thanks to the party’s policy staff.

As well as discussing these areas with working groups the committee has continued to discuss overall political developments and their impact on our policy programme. We have also held discussions with Daisy Cooper MP on the economy and Baroness Doocey on her spokesperson’s paper on Policing.

None of this would be possible without the work of the staff in the Policy Unit, who do the bulk of the work writing policy papers: Christian Moon, the Head of Policy, and Alexander Payne, the Policy Manager. We are very grateful to them as always.