Green Party Conference Agenda

Motion #04

Green Party Regional Council (GPRC)

Motion not yet debated

Joe Hudson-Small, Acting Chair of Green Party Regional Council
Accurate as of 03/10/2024

Contact: gprccochairs@greenparty.org.uk

1 Introduction

The Regional Council comprises of members elected from Wales and the 9 English regions and has responsibility over a number of areas ranging from policy statements made between conferences, advising the Executive, and providing for the well-being of the party.

We are all excited to report that the political strategy overseen by the Council and implemented by our membership has been delivered successfully – we have over 800 councillors and 4 new MPs!

The following members have joined the Regional Council in the last year: Mags Lewis, Marz King, Jenny Rust, Rowan McLaughlin, Helen Hitchcock, Lesley Grahame, Mike McTimoney, Laura Eccott, and Steel Horton.

2 Priorities and Working Groups

For the 2023/2024 year our priorities have been as follows, in no particular order:

  1. Improve the culture of the party by implementing a revised complaints process, temporary suspension process, code of conduct, and social media policy.  
  2. Improve the wellbeing of the party by facilitating the creation of guidance for the framework of ethics and conduct – and address existing divisions within the party. 
  3. Assist in producing governance advice for GPRC, GPEx, and the wider party; and produce a GPRC Handbook. 
  4. Provide on-going oversight of the political strategy process. 
  5. Address the policy process gap resulting from the cancellation of spring conference. 
  6. Ensure that Autumn Conference 2024 considers the recommendations for constitutional reform and the path to limited liability. 
  7. Improve the resilience of our internal elections processes. 

The Regional Council proposed three motions to Autumn Conference 2024 relating to priorities (1) and (6), which regrettably were not able to be heard.

We are pleased that Spring Conference should be restored from 2025 onwards which will address (5).

Various other committees and working groups are making progress on the other priorities.

Going forward, we expect addressing misinformation within the party will be a priority key to the ongoing wellbeing, internal cohesion, and electoral effectiveness of the party.

We concur with the report of the Disciplinary Committee, and in our role to oversee the wellbeing of the party formally express our deep regret that some members (or former members) subject to serious sanctions have taken advantage of others and have either misrepresented their cases or the party’s rules and procedures, which breaks down trust in our party’s processes and in each other.

This misinformation brings the party into disrepute and diminishes the harm experienced by the victims of bullying, abuse, sexual assault, and more – and has no place in the Green Party.

We note and regret the failure of the Executive to combat this harmful misinformation, and we will continue to advise them to address this.

The party’s disputes and complaints system operates according to the law, our legal advice, and our party’s democratically agreed procedures. We appreciate that these can be hard to understand, and we will seek to make these systems more transparent and digestible to members.

The Council has not been responsible for any legal action or costs against the party, but no system is perfect – so the Council has in the last year developed a suite of proposals based on consultations, industry best practice, and legal advice – which we hope to see approved at the next Conference.

3 Changes to our Standing Orders

At the full council meeting in March, GPRC voted to enable supplementary meetings to be called more easily.

The Regional Council also codified certain existing precedents in line with relevant SOC rulings and legal advice.

The Council’s latest standing orders, minutes, and other documents are available on Green Spaces.

4 Key documents GPRC have approved in the last year

  • Political Strategy Review Working Group terms of reference
  • House of Lords Nomination Committee (HLNC) terms of reference
  • Governance indemnity policy

5 Record of Organisational Statements (RoOs)

No updates.

6 Record of Policy Statements (RoPs)

The Constitution requires that we consider policy between conferences, usually following a request from PDC. During an election year, this includes the additional responsibility of approving the General Election Manifesto (GEM2024).

We did not bring GEM2024 or other policy statements to Conference (OoO1) We therefore report that (OoO2) any policy extensions or amendments approved in the 30/05/2024, 01/06/2024, or 2024b meetings of the Regional Council are already part of RoPS, as is the version of GEM2024 approved by GPRC. The PDC Coordinator is responsible for physically adding the relevant details to RoPS, which are available in full on Green Spaces or on request.

The Regional Council approved GEM2024 as it was on 01/06/2024 subject to the conditions set out in the meeting, but we regret that the edits made between the ‘approved’ and ‘published’ versions may exceed the constitutional remit of those responsible for the ‘final editing and presentation’ of the GPRC-approved political content.

The published manifesto is broadly good – and has done its job in facilitating the election of our four new MPs, but we sadly report that the published version included some errors and omissions, including some major deviations from agreed policy, such as:

  • Decriminalisation, rather than legalisation and regulation of drugs.
  • Deprioritisation of a land value tax to a mere long-term aim.
  • Omission of a commitment to end tuition fees and scrap existing loans and debts.

These deviations undermine Conference and our party democracy, and have damaged relationships the party has developed with NGOs, charities, and other organisations on account of our best-in-class policy in these areas.

We will be looking to ensure that the fallout of the procedural confusion surrounding Conference, the AGM, and the ratification fiasco are not repeated in future. We will seek to engage with the PDC coordinator, the Party Structures Working Group, and others as needed to improve the policy process (and Manifesto process in particular) so that Conference time can be dedicated to debating new policy as intended.

SOC Note: OoO1: ‘as we now report to the AGM’ Ambiguous and Contrary to the Constitution. GPRC is required by the Constitution to report to Spring Conference s.6(xiv) GPRC “shall present a written report to the AGM and Spring Conference”

SOC Note: OoO2: ‘any new policy, and’ Ambiguous and Contrary to the Constitution: GPRC cannot propose new policy to RoPS, new policy has to be agreed by Conference

Last updated on 2024-11-02 at 12:44