THE Scottish Green conference has been left in limbo after members voted down the agenda.
No votes will take place and no motions will be debated on Saturday now, after the conference voted to throw out the agenda presented by the Standing Orders Committee.
The committee will have to draw up a new agenda, put it to members, and then put that to the vote before any motions can be heard or debated. That is all likely to take place on Sunday.
Saturday had been due to see two important motions debated by Green members.
The first, tabled by councillor Anthony Carroll and seconded by MSP Gillian Mackay, would have required the Greens to vote against the Scottish Government’s National Care Service Bill as it stands, had it passed.
The second, tabled by MSP Ross Greer and also seconded by Mackay, would have seen the Greens require mechanisms to guarantee that a Budget they agreed to support would not later be altered by the Scottish Government.
As members gathered to debate the motions, Green campaigner and former co-chair of the party’s National Executive Committee Ellie Gomersall raised a point of order.
She raised concerns that amendments to the two motions were to be treated as coming “from the floor”, meaning that if 10 people opposed it, then it would not be heard or debated.
Instead, Gomersall wanted the agenda to be thrown out and replaced with a new version that included amendments as default, forcing them to be heard by conference.
She had an amendment on local government funding, which may have been debated on the Budget motion.
Co-leaders Patrick Harvie and Lorna Slater, as well as other MSPs including Ross Greer and Gillian Mackay, voted to keep the original agenda in place.
However, they were outvoted by party members, who called for it to be binned and redrawn.
The Green conference in Greenock is taking place on October 26 and 27.
