Apply for a New Working Group
The Federal Policy Committee regularly sets up new policy working groups. It is currently seeking applications from party members who wish to serve on three new policy working groups. This is a real opportunity to help shape the party’s policies. The working groups will take evidence and prepare policy proposals to submit to Spring Conference 2027. Working group members are expected to attend meetings (in person or remotely), input their ideas for policy, and play a role in drafting the policy paper. The position is voluntary. The deadline for applications is 15:00 on 8th June 2026. You can find out how working groups are selected here.
The working groups open to applications are:
Victims of Crime
Victims of crime have been let down for too long. Many wait hours for a police response; many never see their crime investigated or the perpetrator charged; many wait years for the trial, prolonging the trauma.
A new working group will develop policies that cut across traditional policy silos to look at policing, the justice system and other public services from a victims’ perspective.
Rural Issues
Rural communities face distinctive challenges and are being let down on everything from transport to health services to crime. They have been failed by a Conservative Government that took rural communities for granted and a Labour Government that clearly doesn’t understand them.
A new working group will develop distinctive Liberal Democrat policies that would protect rural communities’ public services and ensure they have access to decent public transport, affordable housing, adequate broadband connectivity, or protection from crime.
Empowering Local Communities
For a hundred years, Liberals and Liberal Democrats have been fighting for fair votes, to give everyone equal power in our democracy and hold all Members of Parliament properly to account. We want to shift more power out of the centre in Whitehall, so local decisions are made by and for the people and communities they affect.
A new policy working group will develop our vision of a society where residents and community groups have far more control over the decisions that affect their communities. This will be a cross-cutting, thematic working, embracing voluntary community activity as well as elected local government.
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Working groups normally contain about 15-20 party members. In recent years we have been very glad to receive a large number of applications to be on policy working groups; typically between 100 and 200 for each group. In a context therefore where up to 90% of applicants may not end up on the working group, we are understandably looking for people with a strong level of understanding of the policy area concerned, including through lived experience, rather than simply more general support for it.
Applicants are asked to answer four substantive questions, about their party experience; any experience in the policy field under discussion; their views on some of the key questions; and anything else they would like to say.
At the start of the working group process, FPC has usually at least two full discussions of the policy area and the group’s remit, and areas of knowledge or experience it would particularly like to see reflected in the working group’s membership. With this guidance in mind, all applications are then read by an FPC sub-group comprising two vice chairs of the committee and three other members of the committee, along with policy unit staff. They review all applications individually and meet together to then recommend a working group to FPC.
In creating the working group, the central concept is ‘balance’. Balance between different areas of knowledge within the working group’s scope, and between contrasting views on the main areas of difference of view. If leading members of any relevant party AOs have applied, this would normally be reflected in the group’s membership. There is also a very strong emphasis on balance of a range of demographic factors, including gender, age, geography, LGBTI status, ethnicity and socio-economic background. A balance between specialist policy knowledge and lived experience of the area concerned will also be sought.
Clearly, balancing all these areas into a group of about 15-20 members requires some difficult trade-offs, and the selection of those who are appointed will reflect this rather than be a judgement that an applicant does not have any useful experience or insight to bring this area. Our policy process does also offer a range of other ways for those not part of the group to contribute to the final outcome, through a range of formal and informal consultation mechanisms as well as the final debate at Conference.
If you have any questions about the process, please email Alexander Payne alexander.payne@libdems.org.uk