As part of the budget setting process, earlier this year, the Federal Executive were asked to look at how the Party runs its Spring Conference and the costs it incurs. With pressures on Party finances as they are, the challenge was therefore to look at how to make spring conference, at worst, a ‘break-even’ event.
From the start, FE recognised that answering this challenge involved potentially significant changes to Spring Conference, and produced a paper which looks at three broad options – continuing as we do with a two day spring conference (and seeking to make cost savings accordingly), reducing the length of spring conference (and experiencing cost savings proportionately), or abolishing spring conference entirely. Of the three broad options, and being mindful of the need to maintain opportunities for accountability as well as policy development, the FE expressed a preference for solutions based on the second option.
At Conference in Glasgow we ran a consultation session on the paper, but we are keen to hear from people who aren’t necessarily able to attend conference at the moment, or from members who may have thoughts on how we could produce a more financially neutral Spring Conference.
We are asking for feedback from all Party Members. You can find our paper here, which gives you some background on our discussions – and you can e-mail your thoughts or questions to us at [email protected].
The deadline for submissions is Friday 29th November.
* James Gurling is a member of the Federal Board and was brother-in-law to Charles Kenendy.
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It should be noted for reasons of accuracy that the Federal Conference Committee takes a sharply different view.
I hope James and Fed Exec will also take note of the many suggestions, none of them offered by the Consultation Document, that have been made under the thread that I started on Wednesday (20th): Spring Conference: Ditch It Or Shift It.
A one-day conference will be even more poorly attended as it will be hard to justify travelling costs.
Doubts over the Spring Conference surely offers the opportunity to reconsider the whole format of conferences. Many journalists have written about the ineffectiveness of the traditional party conference, and I think we could experiment with format before we drop it.
It could, for example, be a much more interactive process involving more of the membership. At present only a relatively small section of the party can afford to go to conference; we could take advabtage of the free publicity and coverage we get from the BBC to involve more of our membership in a more interactive way.
I used to go to conference as a voting member, then as a steward; but as a pensioner I can no longer afford to go. There must be many in the same position. But I follow the conference on television and would dearly like to vote on the issues.
Non-conference members have no say in imortant policies like HoL reform, and educational and health reform on which they would like to have a vote. It is quite possible that conference voting would be quite different if the wider membership was involved. The restricted elite who attend conference are, after all, not delegates; they vote on their personal opinion. ,
A one day event would look a bit pathetic to the public.
Let’s be original!!
How about an on-line event; where we can all have a vote. To show that we are the most democratic.
Many years ago the party in England, wrongly in my view, opted to abolish the direct scrutiny of the English Party by democratically elected representatives of the local parties in the form of an English Conference, and replace that with scrutiny over the Party in England by its component Regional Parties through the English Council. This disconnection means that the Party in England is not answerable to its local parties or members, but rather to regional elites.
This also means that the policy making of the party in England was in effect vested with the Federal Party as there is no longer any direct representation by local parties to the English Party.
As a part of the budget setting process, earlier this year, the Federal Executive were told to look at how the Party runs its Spring Conference and the costs it incurs, and now a final paper has been drafted suggesting that the Spring Conference should be reduced to a one day meeting in London.
The closing date for comments on this is the 29th November, one day before the next meeting of the English Council which would be the first opportunity for the nearest thing that the party in England has to a democratic voice to consider the final proposals.
Those proposals are immense for the party in England as they mean that not only have we subjugated all responsibility over policy making to the Federal Party, but that now the Federal Party is proposing to reduce the opportunities we have to scrutinise its work in any semblance of a democratic forum.
I could be persuaded that the exclusion of the voice of the English Council from this momentous shift in the democratic control of the party were an oversight, were it not for the fact that there are English Council members who also sit on the FE. I am however more inclined to believe that the Westminster elite believe that this erosion of democratic control of the party by its members is a decision that can be steamrolled through on the back of a sham consultation.
James Gurling’s post does not tell the full story. I refer readers to a report in this month’s edition of Liberator magazine (Radical Bulletin column):
RITE OF SPRING
The consultative session on the future of spring conference gave a robust response to ideas that the event should be either abolished on grounds of economy or reduced to a one-day event in London (Liberator 361).
An equally hostile response greeted the preposterous notion that individual regional conferences could hold the party leadership to account.
But a little more emerged about the financing of spring conference. The problem turns out to be not the cost of the event itself, but that of security.
The Home Office pays for security at the autumn conferences of the three main parties. Because the other parties have no precise equivalent of the Liberal Democrat spring conference, the government does not pay for security there (except presumably for ministers’ personal protection), leaving the party with a £200,000 bill.
That the proposals for the future of spring conference were published without the Federal Conference Committee having seen them has been a further source of grievance.
Why this obsession with security ? At the recent S.E.conference in Lancing, we were addressed by and spoke with a quartet of Cabinet members along with our MEP, and,on the face of it, no obvious security manifesting itself, nor any police for that matter. Maybe they were there, but much more discreet than apparent at the main conference venues.
Is it really necessary to be treated like nightclubbers by a horde of apolitical bouncers at considerable cost to the party?
If security is the issue why not hold the traditional weekend event, but with Ministers etc. only present by video link, and dispense with the Heckler & Koch boys in blue. Backbench MPs would be free to come and go as would SPADs and outside speakers – normal entry security would be provided by the guys n gals with the radar machines.
Regarding the wholesale lack of consultation with only 5 days to consider the FedEx proposals, I will certainly vote against next Saturday.
As 2 of your early contributors have said, this raises once again our own Party’s ‘Midlothian Queston’, in that local Parties in England are denied the direct access to English Party machinery that their Scottish and Welsh counterparts have to their State Parties. Perhaps one possible solution is to make the Spring Conference an English National Conference of the Party and leave Federal Policy issues to September. This might give more time to debate issues like the Health marketisation in England and the Emasculation Balkanisation of Local Government in Schools and Planning policies.
On the wider Policy issue, if as expected the SNP lose the Indepence Referendum in Scotland, we have pledged a ‘devolution plus’ reform amaounting to Home Rule. Is it not time to revive the idea of Home Rule for England and, while we are about it, establish an English Parliament and Capital City on the HS2 route in the North Midlands. One of the 2 chambers of the UK Parliament in Westminster could be closed and sold to the Americans…… or the Japanese….or to Boris for a new Mayor’s office……
I am surprised that this has been even thought of, without having thought about how HQ operates.
Why does the whole of HQ have to close down – and then be moved to wherever the Spring conference is? I.E. is it necessary for the whole of Policy Unit to be at conference, likewise Membership?
Why not just send a couple of people from each section of HQ – that would reduce staff accommodation etc.
Not everyone can get to conference, so has this been sent to those who attended at Brighton, but could not get to Glasgow? What about the consideration for those who are not on the internet?
Not every region has a Spring Conference – so those regions that don’t have it – would not be able to have the Federal conference in their region.
Having a one day conference is certainly a way of making even more sure that those who can afford to attend conference, and manage the cost of 2 nights in a London hotel (either side of the conference) , will get to conference.
I will try and participate in the consultation – but it doesn’t half look like it was rushed through and ill thought.
What’s wrong with my comment on the 23rd?
Gemma, you might as well ask why the membership department needs offices in Westminster for a relatively simple back-office function rather than somewhere cheaper in the London outskirts or (heaven forbid) the Midlands…
will the comments we sent in before conference be taken on board or do we have to resubmit ?
if they go for one day of conference, maybe the next best thing is to have a “plotting day” whilst we are down there. that will teach the establishment 🙂
It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that this is put forward by elites who wish to dilute the extent to which members can hold the leadership to account.
Peter Chivall’s proposal above for a conference where some attend only by video link, reducing security costs for the elite, and travelling costs for the ordinary, seems good to me, though I can understand why the elites would not welcome the loss of the opportunity to debate with conference representatives.
As a compromise, how about a small security-fest in Westminster, with video-and-voting-links to simultaneous regional conferences? Though I accept that the systems would need to be robust (and therefore expensive?), so that that important debate was not disrupted overnight ‘because Region X’s voting link was down…’
I do think we should consider other cost-cutting measures BEFORE diluting the policy process. Reducing Spring to a one-day conference would only be acceptable to me if the amount of time for policy debate was preserved, at the expense of speeches by ministers. But somehow, I don’t think that would be acceptable to them…
There does not appear top be anywhere to send views, other than to James himself.
My view is that we do not have to make any decison yet. We do not know the outcome of the general election, and whether we will be in a coalition or not.
If we are not, and our vote and number of MPs drops, as many of us fear without a radical change in policy, especially economic and social policies, then the cost of security issue outlined by Simon Titley will not be a factor.
We can plan a one-day rally for 2016, in London or Birmingham, and expand it if necessary. If not in government we shall need ther extra debating time to show where we went wrong in swallowing Tory policies.