Don’t Let Mark Pack Stitch up Policy on Vulnerable Children

Last Sunday, Lib Dem President Mark Pack took the opportunity of his Conference address not only to denigrate a group of women members (us) but also to engineer the outcome of a vote on a contentious issue at Spring Conference next year.

Pack was responding to a question from a member demanding to know why our group, Liberal Voice for Women, had not been banned from holding a stall at Conference. In response, instead of making the liberal case for freedom of speech and the importance of members having the opportunity to hear - and challenge - a plurality of views, Pack apologised for the decision, lamenting that equality law did not permit the party to discriminate against us. He went on to legitimise the questioner’s insinuation that our presence posed a danger to other conference-goers, saying “there will be some people who feel unhappy and potentially unsafe as well at this event as a result”. 

He also went one step further: in a move that should be a cause for concern for all members, he specifically linked the controversy about our stall to a policy motion that is to be debated in Spring:

I am sorry that I know you – and others – find this situation unhappy. We are, though, planning to have a debate on the policy that they disagree with [the medicalisation of gender non-conforming adolescents] at our Spring Conference. I hope and expect that will give the whole party a very clear opportunity to express where the overwhelming majority view is in the party, which is our strong support for trans rights and for our trans and non binary colleagues.

Note here his use of the words “they” “our” and “the whole party”. The implication being that anyone who disagreed with him and his faction are somehow “outside” of the party.

Meanwhile, the actual role of the Party President is to Chair the Party’s governing body, the Federal Board, and through that position, to support the party’s aims while upholding the rights and interests of members. In this case, Pack acted outside the parameters of his role, exploiting his Conference address to rally support for an as yet unwritten policy paper on a controversial topic, while creating such hostile conditions that anyone who might want to interrogate it could only do so on pain of being ostracised by the party. 

Even Mark Valladares, a committed censor of gender critical speech, wrote in in his 2019 article about the qualities needed for a party President:

Taking public stances on disciplinary issues, trying to bounce the membership on strategic or policy matters, these are all problems for the President, whose job is to be the public face of the Party and to manage it. The President is required to ensure that the rights and interests of members are upheld…

We hope Mark Valladares will agree with us that what happened last Sunday was a blatant abuse of the office of President, for which we call on him to apologise.

We have been informed that the party will “have consultation” on the policy paper, addressing the question of whether the Lib Dems will continue to push for the medicalisation of gender questioning adolescents, with potentially irreversible consequences for fertility, cognitive function and bone health. 

We urge Lib Dem members with relevant expertise and/or experience to engage with the promised consultation by asking the party to put you in touch with our Equalities Spokesperson, Christine Jardine MP, who will be leading on this paper, and also our Health Spokesperson, Helen Morgan, since this is essentially a matter of health policy. 

Please also consider heading to Spring Conference in Harrogate to have your say in-person. This policy area is too important to be decided with the help of bullying, censorship and technocratic engineering by the party president.

Follow our campaign for responsible approaches to the treatment of gender-questioning children by signing up here.