Being a Liberal Democrat is great. It means you’re a member of a sensible party for normal people; with imaginative policies and a leader who makes sense.
We’re also special as an internally democratic party: party members determine party policy and major decisions are made by committees elected by the party conference because most of us believe the answers we prescribe for our country should begin at home. If centralised control is bad for Britain (its unfair, inegalitarian, and stifles merit and innovation) then its bad for political parties too.
The party conference, organised by the Federal Conference Committee, is the heart of party democracy. I’m afraid to say I am baffled by the FCC’s approach to the Bones Report (aka “The Party Reform Commission”).
In the final agenda the FCC has allocated 9.00-10.45 on Monday morning “to discuss the recommendations of the Party Reform Commission”. This is good because the sovereign body of the party should discuss something of this importance.
The 100-page Bones Report, which has barely been made available in full to most party officers let alone party members, recommends far-reaching changes in our strategy. Some deserve to be welcomed: instituting an academy to develop the skills of our candidates, a technology committee, and closer communication between regional parties and the party leadership.
More controversial is a plan to delegate most the responsibilities of the Federal Executive, the English Party Executive, the English Council, the Federal Finance and Administration Committee, the Joint States Candidates Committee, and others to a single Chief Officers’ Group of 13 people, a majority of whom are parliamentarians or picked by the leader . Bones argues this is a good thing but it is a revolution in who effectively runs the party and in what “I am a member of the Liberal Democrats” means.
But the FCC has:
1. Set aside unspecified time for a presentation by Chris Bones to advocate the recommendations of the Party Reform Commission, but restricted contributions by party members to only 2 minutes;
2. Scheduled no vote(s) on whether Conference endorses the Commission in full or in part; and
3. Indicated that they will accept speeches on issues NOT dealt with in the report!
We will have a “discussion” that is, therefore:
1. Unbalanced;
2. Leading to no definitively expressed conclusion; and
3. Open to filibuster and occupied with matters beyond the issues at hand in the report.
It has strangely been titled a “consultative session”. But the final Bones Report has already been issued. Consultation leading to what?
Our Conference is supposed to be a bright exemplification of how our country’s politics ought to be conducted. On this occasion, it looks like a stitch up, whether or not that is what the majority of the FCC intended.
August 20, 2008 at 11:55 am |
One of the basics of any internal audit is that after setting a remit and scoping it you go round the stakeholders, gather information from them, draw up a draft, FEED BACK to the stakeholders with the draft of the sections that involve them to check that you haven’t got anything wrong, then produce the final report. The problems with Bones are:
1. That the remit specifically said no constitutional change, but that has been ignored.
2. Many stakeholders were clearly not consulted.
3. There seems to be no feedback.
4. An Executive Summary has been produced that identifies the problems, but barely touches solutions.
5. A fuller version of the report is promsied “before conference”, but with little or no time to debate.
You coudl have got any four people in a room and got them to write a report, but would the conclusions it reached be right? There is no way of really knowing unless you have the correct mechanisms in place to ensure the original audit was done properly.
August 25, 2008 at 12:37 pm |
[...] Opinion about Bones? FCC give you only 2 mins to say it Just how will the Bones debate work at [...]
August 25, 2008 at 2:24 pm |
Antony -
Thanks for your coverage of this part of conference, but actually the main thrust of your article is wrong.
As you point out, the session on the report of the Party Reform Commission is a consultative session, without a chance to vote on the recommendations, but this was not FCC’s choice – a consultative session is what the FE asked us to organise.
The Bones Commission itself is not an executive body, and has no power to implement anything – what will happen to its recommendations is up to the FE, not to the Commission. The FE chose not to submit any resolution endorsing any bit of the report to conference, probably because they didn’t see it themselves until well after the deadline for motions – and, as I understand it, want to gather responses on it before reaching any final decisions. Hence the consultative session. If you look at the FE report to conference, you’ll also see that they talk about other consultations with appropriate party bodies.
As for the two-minute limit, that’s purely to maximise the number of people we can call in the session. We could – and might – make it longer, but that will obviously reduce the number of people we can call. And, as the agenda makes clear, we’ll be breaking down the report into a series of sub-sections; we don’t expect anyone to comment on the whole thing all at once.
Duncan Brack
(Chair, FCC)
August 25, 2008 at 9:14 pm |
[...] and others have already gone on endlessly about the plans for a Chief Officers Group and how it is so [...]