Green Party conference: Animals, science and health

For those who've been following these things there has been an ongoing "re-evaluation" of Green Party policy around scientific evidence. This came about mainly due to a few journalists helpfully letting us know that there was some deeply dodgy stuff in policy. It certainly came as a shock to many of us who had not thoroughly read our voluminous policy documents.

This conference saw the first swath of re-orientating our policy on a more science friendly footing. As one of the Party members who've been quite heavily involved in trying to change party policy the experience has been instructive and, I think because we were friendly and open minded in our approach - taking our time rather than just trying to crush anyone who looked like they were in opposition to us, the whole process has been quite effective.

I've already mentioned this but conference started well, as conference passed the motion on abolition of the science pledge. A policy so offensive to scientists and 'technologists' that it makes me wince just to think of it. Anyway, it's gone. Hurray.

This was quickly followed by the passing of the science chapter enabling motion which means that the party has officially endorsed a review and rewrite of our entire science and technology section of the PSS, our core policy document. That's going to take some hard work and we'll be looking for people both inside and outside of the party to help us with that process.

Health

However, some of the key problem areas were in the health chapter which is why a review of this section was prioritised and we voted on this new document on Saturday and this morning. There were a whole number of improvements made and it's to the great credit of the health group that these went through relatively smoothly.

Many of the amendments to policy were on subjects like patient empowerment, the way private medicine feeds off the NHS and breast feeding but I'll stick to the science stuff for the time being.

The headlines in this are that we state that we "will not make judgements on individual treatments or medicines" as that is the job of regulators and scientists which replaced a very specific and somewhat rigid list of treatments we, apparently, like in favour of others.

In HE312 we have removed the idea that health research will have a "particular emphasis" on "holistic treatments" and "complementary therapies". We removed the statement that "vivisection is of questionable value and incompatible with ecological philosophy" replacing it with a section calling for "a thorough evaluation of animal tests" which seems difficult to disagree with as it happens already.

In HE314 we previously had the difficult situation where we appeared to state that alternative therapies did not require the same kind of regulation as more conventional medicines. Conference amended this to ensure that all medicines are properly regulated and subjected to the same controls "based on the best clinical evidence available". We also deleted a long section on "natural medicines", whatever they might be.

Importantly HE315 now states that "We recognize that the assessment of treatments... should be driven by clinical need rather than either political or commercial influence."

Bizarrely, we did have a policy that opposed some stem cell research (but not using adult stem cells) and appeared to be, and maybe even was, the sort of thing George W. might have approved of. This was also problematic because it clashed with our 100% pro-choice agenda on abortion.

Now the policy reads that we look to the "benefits to humans and other animals from stem cell technologies, using both adult and embryonic cellular material. These benefits include direct medical advances, improved non-animal testing methods for new medical treatments, and the advancement of knowledge." What a relief!

Animals

As a last part of this process this conference we also took a look at the animal rights section and although the motion, C9, that I proposed was not passed the animal experimentation policy has been improved by removing direct reference to "scientific" grounds for opposing animal experimentation and the rather blanket reference to "superior non-animal technologies" which implied all animal tests had an already existing superior alternative that did not involve harm to animals.

However, my ambition to strip out all reference to scientific grounds for opposition to animal testing was not approved by conference. I had hoped to stick to the ethics of animal rights within this section and leave the policy on the utility of animal testing to the health section, which seemed more appropriate, but I think members thought this was a step too far and they wanted policy to reassure them they were objectively right on a moral stance. I'm determined to see the positives of this but secretly I'm gutted at this (single) conference defeat.

The debate itself was conducted in a very friendly way and I'm grateful to those who disagreed with me (us) for the open, honest and political way they debated the issues as sometimes these things can get very fraught.

When push comes to shove the Green Party has made great strides forwards at this conference and the focus is now to pull apart the science policy and make sure it's strong, evidence based and relevant to a campaigning political party that wants to see progressive change. All help much appreciated.

Party Conference: fair is worth fighting for

Now I'm back and conference is over I'll try to knock out a few posts to give a flavour of different themes going on over the last four days. I think it's only reasonable to start with the Greens theme for the election encapsulated in the slogan 'fair is worth fighting for'.

Green Party leader, Caroline Lucas, made a very focused speech to conference on the prospects for victory, geeing everyone up and urging everyone to do their bit in the coming election (you can see some of it here).

I particularly liked this bit though on social inequality;

Inequality And it matters because it is the most vulnerable people who suffer first,and suffer most, from cuts and closures. We see it all around us, every day. Britain under Labour has become a country of inequality.

Those at the top, those with the power and influence, making sure that they get more and more of the cake. And those at the bottom having to make do with just the crumbs. The top 10% in this country now have 100 times more wealth than the bottom 10%. A hundred times.

Nothing - no amount of hard work or talent or commitment - can justify that. Those who have less aren't afraid of hard work.

People in service jobs, working night shifts to keep the country going, put in just as much as the captains of industry. Working with disadvantaged children needs just as much talent as serving privileged clients in private banking. And as to commitment - think of the difference between social workers, struggling with bureaucracy, hammered by the media and often by their own management, and trying to do the best for often difficult clients.

Compare that to the commitment of the bosses of the Royal Bank of Scotland, threatening to walk out if their bonuses were cut back too far. That is Britain today.

Deputy leader Adrian Ramsay's speech the day after was also on the theme of inequality but also trained the focus onto privatisation, PFI and the way market deregulation undermines public services and yet still costs us more.

He praised the Sure Start scheme and warned that the coming period will see the need to mobilise against savage cuts in public services.

This was my personal highlight;

The job market is failing young people and in my county it's hitting hardest. Norfolk has the highest unemployment rate for 18-24 year olds of the whole country. It has the highest number of 18-24 year olds on Job-Seekers Allowance, and the highest number of job losses per head of population against any other county. This is the legacy of Tory and Labour governments. And this is what we need to address.

Those people on the dole, will they be helped under Labour? Today Labour launched their General Election slogan- ‘A Future Fair for All'. How can they be trusted to be fair when bankers are still getting bonuses, yet the recession is still putting thousands of other people out of work?

The people who gambled with our money, who built the house of credit cards that now has crashed, get bailed out, but everyone else picks up the bill. That doesn't sound like Fair for All. That sounds like a banker's ‘Free For All'.

We believe in fighting for fairness- not crossing our fingers and hoping for the best. Our proposals would create a million lasting jobs- not ones dependent on cheap fossil fuels or financial bubbles. We want skilled jobs in public services, renewable energy and low carbon industries. We would nurture small to medium enterprises to encourage domestic manufacturing and local agriculture.

It's this economic inequality that goes to the heart of where we on the left must be going. For instance, when Darren Johnson passionately spoke in favour of the maximum wage (although as comments have pointed out we haven't called it that, but that's what it is) if we're not addressing economic inequality we're not serious about social injustice.

(pics from Barnet Green Party)

Conference catch up

Apologies for lack of blogging - I blame science - but I have been tweeting away and will try to give a very quick round up of a few things before I get to bed.

It was good to hear the London FBU voted last night to financially back the Greens. They donated to Darren Johnson's campaign in previous elections and it's great to see their continued commitment, and I'm sure we'll keep up our commitments to them.

Much of the policy discussion has revolved around science. We're removed the ridiculous science pledge, ordered a complete rewrite of our science and technology chapter and our health policy has now got a far more balanced approach that regulates health treatments so, for example, alternative medicines would have to clearly label their ingredients and prove efficacy to get funding. I don't think we need ask more than that.

Prove it works and we'll use it. Simple.

Then we came to the animal experimentation motions, one of which I moved, which Alisdair blogs about here. Basically we find out tomorrow what the result of that will be. Sigh.

We've passed a really interesting policy on parental leave, and a citizen's pension - firming up our economic equality agenda, which is nice.

My personal triumph is that we've now renamed the Manifesto for a Sustainable Society - our core policy document - to the Policies for a Sustainable Society (PSS), which means we wont be entering into the next election with two manifestos, when in fact one of those is a list of all our policies not a campaigning document written for a specific election.

I have to say I think this makes the whole thing a lot clearer and although it's like chiseling with granite I think our processes, documents and policies are becoming far, far stronger. I think that's because we are taking them more seriously.

I'll try to write some slightly more interesting posts tomorrow about the politics of it all, but I thought you'd appreciate some detail on what we've actually passed. When there are places for me to link to of the passed motions I'll do just that.

Green Party conference: Day One

Had an excellent start to Green Party conference today. The first day as always had a good helping of admin and agenda tickling as members had their say on how their conference was run. It sounds nightmarish but it actually works very well. Good stuff this democracy.

We still had time to debate and pass some really interesting motions, although the first vote of the day was when few delegates had arrived and on whether a particular motion was in order or not. The vote was a cliff hanging 41 to 40 - woo!

So the Green Party now supports a maximum wage, like they have in Norway I believe, where the highest earners in a company can only earn a maximum of ten times the lowest paid and we're for introducing a cap on mega-bonuses.

We passed a motion on 'marriage equality' saying that we're for partners of whatever sex opting for civil partnerships or marriages. We also "support an end to the ban on civil partnerships being conducted in places of worship".

We passed the much awaited science enabling motion which allows for an entire rewrite of our science and technology policy chapter - which is going to involve quite a lot of work over the next year. Later in the conference we'll be voting on some of those policies straight away and the rewrite of our health policy which may contain some contentious elements.

We also backed Billy Bragg's campaign against RBS bonuses and the BMA and RCN campaigns on the NHS.

There were also a number of interesting workshops and fringes. I went to a whole swathe of animal discussions in preparation for tomorrow's motions, which I'll write about when we get to them and the science workshops which were really heartening and I'm hoping for more good news to come.