Improving Partnership in Power

It is now over ten years since Partnership in Power was established at conference in 1997. Over this time, it has proved to be a huge success. It led to the production of two general election winning manifestos.

It provided a model to facilitate policy development at all levels of governance. It provided a framework for the partnership between government and party.

We received thousands of submissions from constituency parties, affiliates and community groups in the last round of policy making with many thousands of party members taking part.

We also took our debate out to the wider community both through the consultation documents and through the development of the ‘Big Conversation’ style events.

PiP supported the campaigning work of local parties and Labour representatives providing an avenue to discuss policy issues and broaden local networks. And because PiP develops policy over a three year cycle and has discussion and debate at its heart, it proved to be a good vehicle for developing party members’ political knowledge.

To ensure Partnership in Power continues to be successful, a wide-ranging review was set up in 2003 with three working groups involving all sections of the party, to consider how the party can best develop policy in the third term. The working groups took evidence from across the party and our affiliates on their experience of PiP and suggested improvements.

Annual Conference 2005 agreed new proposals to improve PiP to give members, local parties, affiliates and other party stakeholders a stronger voice in shaping party policy.

These improvements provide a new and better platform for discussing and developing party policy. They build on the success of PiP but also take on board members’ concerns. The new PiP will enable better engagement on topical issues as well as provide party stakeholders with better opportunities for continued dialogue with policy commissions.

The new PiP will also build on the lessons from the Big Conversation, including using the model of consulting the wider community. The new PiP will produce fewer policy consultation documents which are more engaging and designed in a format that makes it easier for local parties and other stakeholders to consult members and the wider community.

Key changes

1. Discussing topical issues

Policy commissions will be responsible for engaging with the party and affiliates on topical issues. They will do this by producing a work programme which will highlight the policy issues and challenges facing the Government in the year ahead.

This work programme will be made available to party stakeholders and will provide a focus for local parties to engage on the topical policy issues. The policy commissions will also be alert to breaking topical issues not covered in their annual work programme and use the new policy commission web pages on the party’s website for engagement on this.

2. Building a dialogue

Policy commissions will also be responsible for building a dialogue with party stakeholders who have made policy submissions ensuring that members can better see the link between their contribution and the work of government.

This will be done, for example, by holding phone conferences with members of the policy commissions and those party units making policy submissions, sending regular email updates, and hosting web chats.

3. Lessons from the Big Conversation

The Big Conversation was hugely successful in enabling local parties, affiliates and Labour representatives to engage the wider community on the policy choices and priorities facing the party in government.

The party has learned significant lessons from this initiative including:
• the courage to open our consultations widely
• the value of asking big questions and focussing discussion on policy choices and priorities
• the format of policy consultation meetings which involved small group round-table discussion
• how to develop new ways of communicating including using text messaging and being more interactive on the web pages.

Local parties particularly welcomed the format of the Big Conversation policy consultation document which was felt to be more accessible and easier to use at consultation meetings.

This format will be adopted with the new PiP policy consultation documents. It will enable party stakeholders to use Partnership in Power to better engage members, local residents and community groups on policy issues, as well as campaign on these issues.

This is an important change as it provides party stakeholders with an opportunity to link up our policy development work with the party’s campaigning priorities.