Shania Pande
Policy Officer, The Physiological Society

Labour Party conference

The Society’s policy team headed to Liverpool, UK in September 2022 to kickstart this year’s round of party conferences. The conference was filled with a quiet but confident view that Labour would win the UK’s next general election among party members, parliamentarians and the media alike.
Tackling the climate crisis was central to the conference, with the conference slogan being “a fairer, greener Britain.” Speaking on the main conference stage, Sir Kier Starmer pledged to launch Great British Energy, a publicly owned green energy company, within the first year of a Labour government. This follows on from Labour’s 100% commitment to clean energy by the year 2030.

The Society’s staff attended a fringe event with the Shadow Minister for Climate Change, Kerry McCarthy MP, and the Chair of the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy select committee, Darren Jones MP, which discussed how behaviour change in individuals is key to achieving net zero. This relates to The Society’s policy work in the area that encourages active travel and climate-friendly diets as a way to mitigate climate change. Both MPs will likely be stakeholders The Society will engage with as part of our climate change work next year.

Conservative Party conference

In contrast to the cautious optimism of the Labour conference in Liverpool, the Conservative conference in Birmingham, UK opened amid growing discontent about the impact of the Budget on the perceptions and future electoral fortunes of the party. Early Monday morning, it was announced that the (then) Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng had been forced to reverse the decision to remove the 45p tax band for those earning over £150,000 a year.

Given both the private, and at times public, unease of many Conservative MPs over the proposals outlined in the “mini-Budget” 10 days before, many that did not have roles in Government had decided not to travel to conference this year, some at less than 48 hours’ notice. As such, the MPs were conspicuous by their absence, with the exception of those high-profile MPs that opposed the tax cut. For example, The Society staff attended a Q&A session with the new Health Secretary, Therese Coffey MP, that did not feature the Health Secretary. We did, however, attend a number of fringe sessions on issues such as retaining older workers in the workforce with panellists from the Centre for Ageing Better and Mumsnet and another focused on higher education with Baroness Justine Greening, John Stevenson MP and Pete Gibson MP about ensuring higher education was at the heart of “levelling up”. This event was hosted by the National Centre for Universities and Business (NCUB), an organisation The Society has previously collaborated with as part of its Translating Knowledge and Research into Impact report.

As a result of this engagement, The Society has secured Carole Easton from the Centre for Ageing Better as a speaker at the launch of our report into the ageing workforce. We will also ensure that the language used throughout our policy reports aligns with the new Conservative government’s prioritisation of attempting to stimulate economic growth and offer policy solutions with a physiology element that meet that ambition.