Napo AGM 2018

Top Floor Travelodge with seaview and within spitting distance of Morrisons, Home Bargains and Wetherspoon's. On a Friday night, does life get much better than this I ask myself? Suitably fortified with snacks and cheap wine, good internet access means there's just time to knock out a quick report on day one of the Napo AGM here in grand but ever-so-slightly beyond its best Southport. I do like the place though and was here a couple of years ago to see the amazing Vulcan fly in formation with the Red Arrows in that year's airshow. But to business.

Worries about quoracy seem but distant memories nowadays and hence business started on time, a distinct departure from historic practice I well remember. Like last year at Nottingham, we sailed through a number of non-contentious motions on pay and training with worthy cases made for each, but for me things got rather more interesting at a proposal for a Retired Members' Committee, wittily suggested by the indefatigable Jeremy Cameron. Why doesn't Napo harness all that energy and experience so obviously present at so many AGM's of late? 

It's a damn good question and one I suspect that fills the 'Top Table' with some trepidation only skirted around by Keith Stokeld's objection. It easily passed never-the-less and I suspect is an idea that will prove to have legs. It was interesting, but somewhat alarming to hear that the Trade Union Organisation Committee only has one member and a former retired member felt compelled to give voice to her very negative experience having joined the group last year. I've said it numerous times in the past - there is a fundamental dysfunctionality at the heart of Napo that has yet to be addressed. Maybe it will fall to the retired members getting organised to sort it out?

It would seem that the accounts have generated some particularly tricky written questions this year that will take 24 hours to try and answer with lots of reference to 'information held back at HQ'. A half-hearted presentation on a whole 'digital upgrade' left most of the audience underwhelmed, which should be alarming in itself if the eye-watering cost not far off £100,000 is any where near correct. What bothers me is the quality of the content rather than the damned 'digital' platform. 

There's always a buzz of excitement when Chair of Steering Committee Jan Peel waves a yellow sheet and mutters the words 'Emergency Motion'. So it was that we hear    
the General Secretary is to be asked to account for the Certification Officer's recent decision in the Peros case, assuming conference passes the motion tomorrow. Should be interesting in a number of ways and particularly with regard to the role of the NEC.

I'm afraid I was hugely underwhelmed by star speaker Lord Fred Ponsonby, co-chair of the Justice Unions and Family Court Parliamentary Group. Billed as a 'good speaker' it was as if he'd either mislaid his carefully-crafted rallying cry or had been lent on to re-write it. Apart from discussing practice regarding DV cases as a Magistrate, I have no idea what he was rambling on about. 

More uncontentious business covering disability, family justice, health & safety and sickness management were passed and filled the afternoon following some very good presentations on BAME issues by an invited panel, including Kilvinder Vigurs Operational Director for NPS London. A Constitutional Amendment allowing electronic voting was carried with some concern expressed over the role of workplace meetings, but opposition to ViSOR and vetting was vociferously aired with only muted dissent. "Not culturally part of probation" the motion was easily carried.