Despite its length, my blog post over the weekend about the security checks being carried out for Liberal Democrat conference, didn’t go through all the issues in equal detail. So here to make up for some of the areas I wrote less about are some excellent blog posts written by others:
- Over on his blog, Stephen Glenn explains how slow accreditation can make conference more expensive for people by giving details based on his own situation.
- Zoe O’Connell has dug out the figures which show how problematic the checks being used are for transgendered people, as they rely on a system that seems prone to mistakes which out them (and see this where Sarah explains why the system means she’s decided not to come to conference).
And finally, from people who have got their accreditation through today, I hear that Conference Office have changed their email to look remarkably similar to my suggestion. Good for them on reacting positively to feedback.
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7 Comments
Conference registration process has been illiberal, costly, cumbersome and almost certainly unnecessary. Please could conference committee publish evidence why such an illiberal process was used.
Worth pointing out that I think most Labour (and I suspect Tories for theirs) book their conference accomodation and transport months before they get accredited.
And given that as Zoe pointed out the failure rate is somewhere between 0.02% and 0.2%, you might as well not book your stuff because you’re worried about flooding in central Birmingham.
I’m not sure what the relevance of the CRB check process is. I saw nothing in the LD conference accreditation process that allowed me to deal with it as I have, successully, with a CRB check. However, like other trans people, I have no faith in the bureaucratic processes. I have had repeated issued with DWP, writing to me under my old name and an address they had no right to know. I’m fairly sure they got it from the HMRC – but even after messing that up, they failed to process my gender recognition properly, and in order to get it fixed I had to talk about being trans to many of the DWP/HMRC apparatchiks. I have been accredited for the conference – but my expectation of failure/ problems was more like 50% than the fraction of 1% suggested by Alasdair.
This whole mess leaves me with yet another issue with the party I thought represented me.
@Pete Flynn. It was used following a decision of the Federal Conference Committee based on a report which is “confidential”. I’m not on FCC but the list of people who are is on the Liberal Democrat’s website.
I think there was also a piece by Andrew Wiseman on Liberal Democrat Voice back in June around the time the decision was made…
Last year stewards (of which I am one) were required to do all this accreditation stuff, that seemed right as we have privileged access back stage. Members should also now be aware of the stricter security at the gate, which is also right for a governing party.
My understanding from talking to a FCC member is they didn’t have a choice – if you don’t do this then you won’t get police approval for the security arrangements and that will invalidate the insurance. You can’t run conference without insurance cover so they had to go along with it.
Besides, the argument from security does not convince. The party’s conference, with its bag checks, stewards and police presence, is the last place to choose if you have taken it into your head to assault a Lib Dem minister. And if terrorism is the concern, then exclusion from the conference is hardly sufficient punishment. Terrorists should be imprisoned, not barred from participating in worthy debates on the reform of local government finance.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/sep/07/lib-dem-conference-fiasco
Is there any published reason why the report justifying the arrangements is confidential, then? Or are the reasons for the confidentiality confidential too?