Motion #20
The Green Party Executive must allocate resources to ensure that the Party’s Disability Group can function adequately. In setting the Party’s budget the Executive must provide the necessary funding through to 2025. The required resources will provide administrative and web support.
SOC note: The below text has been removed from the motion text and added as background.
Conference notes:
The Green Party of England and Wales is committed to equality and inclusion.
For its many disabled members, this inclusion requires that reasonable adjustments be made that will facilitate full participation in all aspects of the life of the Party.
This active commitment will demonstrate to the voting public that the Green Party truly does politics differently.
To live up fully to our commitment, we must ensure that the views of disabled members are properly reflected in all that we do.
One of the ways in which we ensure that disabled members are represented in the Party is by supporting a vigorous and active Green Party Disability Group (one of the Party’s long-established Special Interest Groups).
The framework that the Party operates for supporting Special Interest Groups, however, is not equally accessible to all groups and therefore does not currently match our commitment to inclusion.
The current framework provides free use of certain technical tools to Special Interest Groups (for example, to set up and manage their own web sites and to distribute mass emails to targeted audiences). In order to benefit from these tools, and from the related training, Groups must have access to a range of capacities and resources (including technical and economic). The context also requires that Special Interest Groups have access to other skills and aptitudes, including administrative and organisational ones.
The arrangement of society at present means that members of the Disability Group are frequently least likely to have access to these resources. Our commitment to meaningful inclusion requires that we recognise these barriers and accordingly implement reasonable adjustments.
Accordingly, Conference instructs the Green Party Executive to manage the Party’s budget and the priorities of the Party’s staff team in order to provide:
2 Staff resource thereafter to maintain the site, implement updates and improve accessibility over time in line with published best practice (as identified by members of the Disability Group).
3 Staff resource to provide administrative support to officers of the Disability Group.
Conference instructs the Green Party Executive to ensure that such resources are equivalent to at least one full person-day per week for an initial period of three months and equivalent to at least one half person-day per week thereafter until at least the end of 2025.