Reporting Back
FPC meetings report: February 2023
Federal Policy Committee meetings report: February 2023. From Jeremy Hargreaves, vice-chair of the Federal Policy Committee.
JH
13 Mar 2023
Federal Policy Committee - meeting report March 2023
JH
30 Mar 2023
Freshly reinvigorated from the York conference – which overwhelmingly passed two of our papers, and hosted lively consultation sessions on three current working groups – FPC had a full meeting this week to discuss a wide range of pieces of work.
Firstly, following a review of areas where we want the party to flesh out its views fully, and which we believe could help us politically, we have decided to set up policy working groups on The Future of Work, and Science & Innovation. This will include Artificial Intelligence, as well as other areas. Our intention is that these will develop and consult the party on proposals over the next year, with a view to bringing final proposals to autumn 2024 conference. We will be advertising for party members to be part of this group over the next few weeks.
Next, we reviewed developments in the area of improving housing supply, and associated planning issues, since we did work on this last year. We have decided to revise the policy paper developed by one of our working groups led by Cllr Peter Thornton, and to submit it in revised form for Conference to debate this autumn. We will be doing further work on this after the local elections.
Next, we reviewed our programme of developing policy papers. As a result partly of the cancellation of last autumn’s conference and therefore the papers intended for it coming to subsequent conferences, as well as the decision to bring forward a revised housing paper, we now have more working groups under way than we can bring papers to this autumn conference. After discussion we have confirmed that, subject to finalising them over the next three months, we plan to propose papers on the following topics to this autumn conference:
- Pre-Manifesto
- Homes & Planning
- Natural Environment
- Childcare
- Food & Farming
Our papers on International Security and Opportunity & Skills, as well as some specific aspects of animal welfare from the Farming group, we will plan to propose to spring conference 2024. For autumn conference 2024, as outlined above we would expect papers on Future of Work, and Science and Innovation.
We had good discussions with the chairs of the International Security, Food & Farming and Early Years working groups about their work, particularly reflecting on feedback from members at consultation sessions in York. We will be continuing to work closely with them as in most cases they finish their work over the next three months.
We held some early discussions about some policies which we hope will exemplify our over-arching policy narrative, in a number of areas, and will be doing further work on these.
And lastly we discussed three motions on Hate Speech, the Windsor Framework and the response to the Türkiye-Syria earthquakes, which the party’s International Relations Committee (FIRC) will be proposing to ALDE Congress in a couple of months’ time. We thought they set out the party’s views on these areas, briefly, very well.
After four meetings so far this year, we will now pause to allow us all to focus on the May elections – before we’re back with a vengeance to finalise our papers for autumn conference!
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