Federal Council is not yet a productive committee. In fact, given I’ve had to skip at least one canvassing session to attend it, I might go as far to say that it’s been a net negative in terms of achieving the party’s goals of getting liberals elected.

It has so much promise. In the handy visual diagram of the party’s committees provided in the conference handbook, it’s shown as equal to Federal Board, so is a committee that if effective yields important power. But so far, we have little to show for our time.

Much has been said about our power to call-in and overturn Board decisions, but for me, the call-in power should only be one of last resort—an Emergency Stop to the workings of the federal party only to be used in extreme circumstances. Our other power, that of asking the Board to respond on any issue, has barely been used. We have had Q&As with the president, but if all Federal Council can aspire to be is another forum for Q&As, indistinguishable from those asked of the Board at Conference, then we are failing in the responsibility to Conference when the Federal Council was created as the compromise for a smaller, more agile Federal Board.

Scrutiny in local government is something we have plenty of experience with in the party. We were fortunate enough to have Lisa Smart in our first session giving the same introduction to scrutiny as she would give to newly elected councillors. The LGA’s workbook on scrutiny describes effective scrutiny as one where the scrutiny committee acts as a critical friend to whom they are scrutinising, with an effective work programme and with both sides approaching the opportunity positively, and not adversarially. These seem like sound principles.

Sadly these are not attributes that we currently have. Unfortunately a small number of my council colleagues seem unable to place personal politics to one side for our work in council, and approach board scrutiny adversarially and from a position of distrust. Conversations outside of meetings are regularly derailed by niche interests, draining energy that could be spent more constructively in getting our own house in order, and in scrutinising the board.

We have been slow to get going, taking months to set up our standing orders and to elect vice chairs. More assistance from the federal party to set this up might have helped, but all of us must share some of the blame for this slow start.

We still do not have an effective work programme.

In setting our meetings to be after board meetings we did so under the assumption we’d have something to call in. This was an error, as our agendas are now set by the board and it has introduced an expectation that we’re chasing the board, rather than feeding into it. We must switch round that relationship, come to a consensus on where we would like to scrutinise and then ask the board to bring papers and presentations to us, whilst things are still evolving and we have a chance to scrutinise the shape of them, not just after the fact.

In Manchester, I sit on the Economy & Regeneration overview and scrutiny committee. It is common for officers to bring updates on strategy, progress reviews or draft papers to scrutiny, for them to be scrutinised ahead of their adoption by the executive. It is time for Federal Council to reset our ways of working to one not where we’re led by the board, but to one where we are leading and helping, acting as that critical friend that can bring about needed change, and help make sure the Federal Party is going about the goal of electing liberals in the most effective way.

Now we have our standing orders and vice chairs, setting up a work programme, and setting ourselves up to make those scrutiny sessions effective must now be our top priority. Only then can we be doing the job expected of by Conference.

* Chris Northwood (she/her) is a councillor in Manchester, deputy group leader of the Manchester Liberal Democrats and member of Federal Council.