Jeremy sets out some of the improvements to the party’s policy-making and conference system which have now been agreed, following his booklet on party policy-making, Wasted Rainforests.

This article appeared first in the June 2005 issue of Liberator magazine.

Last summer I wrote Wasted Rainforests, a pamphlet outlining my criticisms of the way our party’s policy-making processes work, and making some suggestions for improvement. Liberator kindly assisted, by allowing me to summarise some of my points in these pages, and by organising a fringe meeting at party conference on the subject.

A number of people spoke to me or wrote to me to say that they agreed with what I had said. Some were even more critical than I was, and raised further problems. Several people who understand the policy-making process better than I do, pointed out where my criticisms were misplaced or my suggestions would not work. But overall many people told me that Wasted Rainforests reflected some frustrations that they had long held. Emboldened by this support, and much better informed by many discussions, I sat down with all the comments, and with others put together some concrete and specific proposals for the Federal Policy Committee (FPC) and the Federal Conference Committee (FCC).

Both these committees discussed these proposals – as it happened in the same week in January. They bravely agreed to make some changes. Some will be fairly obvious, and some by their nature will be less visible but will hopefully make a useful difference.

But on their own these changes will not be enough. If we are to see the more dynamic process that many people agreed last year they wanted, it will take an effort from more than just FPC and FCC tinkering with a few processes.

But I’ll come on that: firstly let me tell you what we have done.

One of the key criticisms is that conference spends too much time discussing long and detailed policy motions rather than interesting current live political arguments. In response, FCC has agreed to experiment in Blackpool this autumn with leaving a couple of significant slots in the timetable open until fairly late in the conference planning schedule (September), and to allocate these to debating live political topics rather than traditional detailed motions. The conference immediately after the General Election, and when there are much fewer than normal policy papers planned, is a good time to try out this kind of new idea.

FCC has also agreed to help ‘break up’ and vary the formats used at conference, by allowing one or two slots for active groups within the party to present the work they have been doing. These might be Liberal Democrat council groups, or party bodies such as SAOs, or perhaps parliamentary departmental teams. Different parts of our large party now do a whole range of interesting things – many of which directly improve real people’s lives – and it would be good to spread the knowledge and good practice of them more widely – among ourselves as well as to the media.

I believe that one of the reasons we end up with some quite obscure and dull stuff on our conference agendas is perhaps that we are simply trying to fill up too many hours of conference time. So it’s also been agreed that on two mornings at autumn conference, we will start at 10.30am, rather than 9am. There are plenty of other training and fringe events going on, and there is no reason why conference needs to meet 9am – 6pm every day.

None of these changes detract from conference’s role as the central (indeed the only) policy-making forum in the party. What they should do is to make it a more interesting and dynamic event.

I think one of the most effective ways of creating current disaffection with the conference and policy-making among party members interested in policy, is the process for submitting policy motions. Every year a large number of local parties, individuals and SAOs submit motions only to have them rejected by FCC, with ‘poor drafting’ cited as the reason in a lot of cases. None of us like to be told that we can’t write, and this quite predictably enrages a whole class of people who ought to be the ones most interested in conference and policy-making. FCC now does have some quite particular standards for how it would like policy motions to be written. Bridging this divide is vital: so FCC has agreed that in advance of the final deadline for motions, there will be an earlier deadline for motion submitters to put in their motion, and receive drafting advice from FCC members on what they should submit. The final say on the motion will remain with the submitter, and the advice will only be about the drafting – and accepting the advice will not guarantee that the motion will be accepted for the agenda. But if different approaches to drafting are a major barrier to motions being accepted (as they are), this should remove this particular obstacle. Speaking personally, when I have submitted motions myself, they have greatly benefitted from exactly this kind of assistance. In future if any submitter of a motion does not take up this offer, then they will not be in a position to complain if it is subsequently rejected on grounds of poor drafting.

And in response to the criticism that the requirement that policy motions ‘create new policy’, led to too many motions on obscure topics that we just hadn’t got round to making policy on yet, FCC has stated clearly that there is no such
requirement. How interesting and innovative a policy proposal is, is presumably something that FCC will consider when selecting motions, but novelty is not now a formal requirement.

FCC has agreed to draw up (in consultation with FPC) and advertise a list of topics on which it particularly invites policy motions to be submitted. In fact this follows the practice of the last few conferences – and should be helpful to a local party or group which is keen to contribute a motion to conference, and is seeking guidance.

And finally, FCC discussed ways in which we could make the actual debates themselves, once the topic is chosen, more exciting events. I think that part of the story here is that we simply don’t have enough good speakers in our debates – or if we do have them, they are strongly encouraged to speak only once during a conference. This will perhaps be a controversial view to take in Liberator, but I actually would like to see more of our MPs speaking in debates. I certainly don’t want to see debates comprising only wall-to-wall MPs, but it is actually now very rare for any MP to speak on anything unless they are a frontbench spokesperson. It must be possible to find a middle way here, and get more good speakers speaking, as well as encouraging new speakers through things like speaker training (including using the conference hall when conference itself is having a late start).

Of course, as well as speakers, a key element in making a debate interesting, is having an interesting motion to debate in the first place. Quite a substantial proportion of the motions, especially on major topics, will continue to come from the Federal Policy Committee (FPC), and FPC has also agreed to improve the way it handles policy working groups and policy papers.

Crucially, FPC has agreed to take stronger ownership and direction of the policy papers and motions which come to conference in its name. As concrete ways of achieving this, FPC has agreed to be more specific in setting objectives for working groups and what it wants them to come up with. This won’t mean writing their conclusions for them before they start, but it will mean that FPC’s involvement will seem less like simply telling a working group and chair just to go away and take a look at, say, macroeconomics, and come back with whatever they want to. This won’t prevent working groups from contributing their own experience and ideas, but hopefully it will make them a less totally autonomous part of the policy process.

It’s been agreed too that as well as distinguished experts in the field, policy working groups contain some members who are not experts, but have something else to contribute. But I’ve learnt that there is a need to be careful: there is no point in working group meetings being taken up simply by explaining to “lay” members how policy in this particular area works, as sometimes already happens.

And having set clearer objectives for a group, FPC will keep a closer eye on how the working group is doing and what they are coming up with. Each working group will contain two members of FPC, and FPC will discuss their draft conclusions before the group finalises them and FPC finally discusses and amends them at the end of the process.

When FPC does come finally to approve policy papers and motions, it will want to see a small number of key headline policies which the paper proposes, highlighted. We’ve also set motions being shorter and punchier as a specific aim: instead of the motions being detailed summaries of almost everything in the accompanying paper, the paper’s Executive Summary will do that, leaving the motion to concentrate on the bigger picture.

One of the key demands for improvement from the party’s policy-making process, was that policy papers which FPC brings forward to conference form part of a coherent whole, rather than simply be independent items brought forward separately on their own individual merit. And here there really will be change. FPC has agreed to set up an exercise (currently under the title Meeting the Challenge) at the start of the 2005-9 Parliament which will take a major strategic look at what the Liberal Democrats have to offer British politics. Consulting at autumn conference 2005 and concluding at autumn conference 2006, this should set our overall political direction and agenda for the next Parliament – and one thing that will flow from this will be the selection of topics on which FPC will commission policy papers.

As well as setting the agenda for policy papers, Meeting the Challenge will also allow FCC to do some advance planning of conference agendas, to ensure that the policy areas we believe are most important and distinguish us most, feature appropriately prominently at conferences through the electoral cycle.

The aim of all these procedural changes is ultimately to assist us as a party in coming up with clear and distinctive policies which answer the needs and wishes of the British public. I hope they do that. But on their own, changes to process will make little difference.

For the one thing that I have realised more frequently than anything else through this process of proposing procedural changes, is that what will really make a difference is party members taking an active and strongly political approach, in coming up with policy ideas and putting them forward. We can improve the structure of conference, but what really makes a conference interesting or not, are the motions on the agenda – how exciting, how distinctive and how politically astute they are. FPC can take a stronger grasp of policy papers, but really makes them worthwhile and useful is the quality of the ideas within them.

And achieving this is down not to the members of party committees, but to every member of this party – and especially those who come to conference. Making conference and our policies exciting is something which needs the contribution of all of us.

So if you think that the party’s policies are too boring, or inadequate: contribute your ideas to them. Propose motions to conference. Put yourself forward for contributing to working groups or election to the policy committee. Write an article. Publish a pamphlet. What makes us interesting, exciting and useful to society – as well as more newsworthy – is the quality and quantity of our ideas.

Personally, after a year of discussing the way that the intricacies of our policy processes function, my interest in questions of procedure is almost at the point of exhaustion. The new Parliament offers us wonderful opportunities to contribute to British politics – not just because of the strength of our representation in Parliament, but through our ideas. Thatcher drove the agenda of political ideas in the late 70s and through the 80s. New Labour did it through the 1990s. Who has a striking and innovative approach to bring in 2005? The opportunity is there for us in a way that it has not been for many years for us to relate a Liberal approach to the challenges of the time – not this time through delivering more leaflets than the rest, but through the force of our ideas.

Jeremy Hargreaves is author of Wasted Rainforests.