This weekend, Conference will get a vote for my proposals of a new disciplinary process for the Party. This is the culmination of a series of consultation phases, and has been designed with members’ feedback at the forefront of our minds.
You can read my report here, and paper copies will be available at Conference. I will also be holding a Q&A session during the Saturday lunchtime fringe slot in the Marine Suite at the Ramada Plaza Hotel in Southport. If you are attending Conference you are very welcome to attend and ask me any questions you may have, ahead of the debate which will take place that afternoon from 5pm.
I have been clear from the beginning: the only way members will be well-served by a disciplinary process is if it is simple, transparent and efficient. It needs to be a stand-alone process, and it needs to deal with complaints promptly with clear lines of communication. It also needs robust guidance on how to care for all those who may find themselves trying to navigate the process, be they complainants, witnesses, those complained against, or those sitting on the panels.
I’d like to encourage everyone to come, contribute to the debate, and vote for the proposals being put forward.
* Lord Ken Macdonald is a former Director of Public Prosecutions and Liberal Democrat member of the House of Lords
2 Comments
There will be no point changing processes when complaints get ignored and have no action taken to resolve them. Without people making sure things actually happen property I tried to pass details of these on to the Parasram report using the published email which didn’t work. I tried about 7 times and flagged it up with the party centrally and the party president – again no response. So I would have serious reservations about how robust that report was.
A major problem is the party hiding behind data protection over who is a member and who is not. I tried to raise an historic complaint and was told that the party cannot tell me whether or not the person is still a party member!