Scottish Conference took place in Perth on Saturday. The 300 year old Salutation Inn near the river has been putting up weary travellers for over 300 years and has been holding Lib Dem events for just about as long. I don’t think the decor has changed in all the time I’ve been going there since we moved back to Scotland in 2000 so it’s a wee bit dated but it serves decent pub food and the staff can’t do enough to help you. And the big win for me is that they make the toast for you at breakfast. You don’t have to stand for ages and watch helplessly as the slow moving toast machine burns your bread.
I shall cover the controversial debates – and there were a couple where we disagreed really well with excellent speeches – in another post, but I wanted to tell you about an innovation or two.
You know how quite often we get motherhood and apple pie motions which state the obvious Lib Dem position on an issue and nobody is ever going to vote against? Rather than give them half an hour’s debate, they have a party spokesperson present them in a report, speak for five minutes or so about the ideas and then have Conference vote. Housing spokesperson Paul McGarry, also the Conference Convener, was the first to trial this. His policy proposals were:
Reaffirmation of Youth Homelessness Mediation and Support
o Establish new centres across Scotland to provide supported accommodation,
advice, and training for homeless young people.
o Focus on mediation and reconciliation with families, ensuring agencies work to
keep young people connected with their families where safe and possible.2. Extension of Aftercare Support
o Extend Aftercare, currently available to care-experienced individuals up to age 26, to any young person who has experienced homelessness for longer than 6
months and is assessed to have been disadvantaged.
Recognise the disadvantages faced by young people in temporary accommodation
Paul experienced homelessness as a young person himself. He said:
We cannot overlook the severe disadvantages faced by young people who find themselves in temporary accommodation. Under the current government, the number of young people in such circumstances has regrettably increased. It is our duty as a party to act, providing these young people with better opportunities and striving for a level playing field.
It is a liberal principle to demand equality and provide an individual with every opportunity to succeed irrespective of their circumstances.
Our commitment to extending support and creating new centres is a step towards ensuring that no young person is left behind. By bringing these policies to conference, we seek to engage our members in this mission and make Scotland a place where every young person has a fair chance to thrive.
The second spokespeople report came from agriculture spokesperson Claire McLaren. She announced the establishment of a Rural Affairs Working group to develop and update our policy:
We recognise the importance these sectors have in continuing environmental custodianship, securing food security within Scotland and the further UK and their considerable contribution to rural economic activity. We further recognise the readiness of these sectors to adapt to new practices laid out in recent Scottish Government Legislation, such as The Agriculture & Rural Communities Bill 2024 and anticipated Land Reform Bill.
Rural communities are a crucial part of our social and environmental landscape, we further recognise the importance to secure and allow these communities opportunities to grow from the secure foundations generations have built.
Changes to Agriculture and Crofting support have not been clarified by Scottish Government, resulting in current industry uncertainty. This is threatening food security, environmental improvements, and rural economic progress.
I think that some people will, rightly, be sceptical of making policy without debate. However, Conference does have the right to reject the reports, so spokespeople will have to be very careful about the sort of proposals they bring.
* Caron Lindsay is Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and blogs at Caron's Musings
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2 Comments
This is an interesting idea, and might save time on the agenda, but I would have two primary concerns about it being adopted more widely.
Firstly, who decides what fits into this category and where the line is? What one person considers to be motherhood and apple pie, another might consider to be marmite (ok, I’m not totally convinced this works as an analogy but you see what I mean hopefully!).
Secondly, I believe our policies should always be stronger from having been the subject of debate. There may be very little or even no dissent but perhaps some clauses could be clearer or stronger, or some small element could be improved, and this can be determined through listening to different points of view. And definitely we can all benefit from listening to the expertise that has been gained by those who have developed or analysed the motion, so that even if its passing is inevitable, we all have a better understanding of why we stand by these policies.
I would be very wary of turning any policy development into a rubber stamping exercise for these reasons.
These are great points raised by Caron and Katherine.
I am aware as are you all of the problem we are trying to solve. The solution is a difficult one. I am definitely sceptical of my own idea. The reality is there are many things in our manifesto that have not been subject to scrutiny. There are also positions taken by various spokespeople and our elected representatives, often these are without scrutiny. The success of mini motions also produces a lot more.
We are still reviewing this, and making sure it follows closely with the objectives of the spokesperson report. One potential safeguard will come in a standing orders review where we would perhaps have a threshold of 90%. The idea is that if we have got it wrong as Katherine suggests might happen and there is a debate to be had then this will create a mechanism to do just this.
It is always difficult proposing such new initiatives and I am massively fortunate in Scotland that our membership are supportive as they understand the motivations and willing to give these things a try, and as a conference committee who are trying to come up with new ideas that is amazingly helpful.