Standing Orders Committee Report No 3 – 2020 National Conference

• Code of conduct for Left Unity National Conference – via Zoom

Refer to Standing Orders Committee: either in chat function to Doug Thorpe or email standingorders@leftunity.org (giving a phone contact number).

1. for advice on standing orders including procedural motions and in case of complaints
2. for questions relating to order of debate

Furthermore, SOC recommends that conference attendees:

3. should respect authority of the chair during session
4. should ensure that debate and discussion should be respectful
5. should refer to Conference Arrangements Committee (Kate Hudson via chat function) for logistics and access issues

• The current Standing Orders Committee (SOC) members are:

Doug Thorpe

Andrew Burgin

• Report of work of the Standing Orders Committee (SOC)

A final motions and amendments booklet (SOC Report no 2.) has been published on the Party website.

Motions and amendments have been grouped as far as possible by subject priority topic with priority to Manifesto amendments as recommended by the National Council, and are listed within the final motions and amendments booklet (SOC Report No 2). The order the SOC recommends the motions shall be taken in will be shown in the proposed Order of Business (separate document).

Two emergency motions have been submitted by the EC: One on the outcome of the USA Election, and one on Jeremy Corbyn. The text of these will be published separately. The SOC considers that these relate to issues that have happened since the deadline for motions and are properly subjects that can form emergency motions.

Conference of course controls its own agenda and may, when it receives the SOC report at the beginning of Conference, amend the ordering that has been devised by the SOC.

In approving this report, Conference is invited to approve the work done by the SOC in dealing with the agenda items.

• Time limits on speeches

The SOC recommends that proposers of all motions be given five minutes to propose, and a further three minutes to sum up. Proposers of amendments to motions should be given three minutes to speak, All other speakers should be given up to three minutes. In the event that the conference does not run to time, the SOC may propose a reduction in speaking times which will be put to the Conference for approval.

• Motions not reached when sessions run out of time

All motions and amendments that are not reached when sessions run out of time will run on to a later session allocated to motions. Motions and amendments not taken by the end of conference, shall stand referred to the National Council.

The recommended agenda and order paper has been provided in a separate document published on the website.

This document is also available here as a printable PDF