Meetings for party members are being arranged around the country, in parliament frontbench teams are hosting policy discussions with backbench colleagues, and comments and contributions are coming in from local parties and individual members.

I wish we’d seen more of this activity earlier, though of course campaigning for local elections in many parts of the country took priority until May. But we need to make sure that our process of renewal is genuinely inclusive, meaningful and effective, and I hope the 24 June deadline for submissions won’t be seen as an endpoint, but as the first staging post in ongoing discussion with and among party members and beyond.   Ed Miliband’s been clear that now is not the time for detailed policy proposals – we certainly shouldn’t be drawing up our manifesto for a general election which is still scheduled not to take place until 2015. So there is time for debate – and indeed a role for dissent – in developing and refining our policy programme, and for that process itself to take place in a way that engages more public support for and confidence in Labour.

I think that’s been the intention behind the party’s public listening events, but those events (which took place only in some areas of the country, and which inevitably have only involved limited numbers) certainly don’t mean the job of engagement in policy formation is done.  This month’s National Policy Forum, and our annual conference in the autumn, must also be part of the discussion and engagement process, not simply taking the conversation as being concluded and presenting a set of positions which delegates passively accept. Ongoing and vigorous debate among Labour members and supporters should be part of our way of strengthening and refounding our party, and the party’s national meetings are an important setting where that should occur.

As we prepare for the NPF, I’ll be arguing for ‘listening events’ to continue, for them to embrace more members and supporters, and for using a range of media and activities to facilitate ongoing debate. I’ll be proposing that we should empower our members to lead that debate, both inside our constituency parties and with the wider public, drawing on the expertise that members bring from their wide-ranging personal and professional experience. I’ll be suggesting that we should encourage and support individual members to use their own social and virtual networks to maintain our engagement with the public – their friends, families and neighbours – to communicate what Labour’s about, and to provide ongoing feedback of the public’s views.

Finally, and most importantly, as we start to do our politics differently, I’ll be arguing that our policy making process must respect, overtly respond to, and genuinely engage with what is being said on the ground: it hasn’t always felt like that. So the forthcoming National Policy Forum is an important opportunity to prove that this time we’re serious about doing it.