There are two useful reports of the proceedings of the Labour Party National Executive Committee from slightly different perspectives. I have published them together in the interest of debate.
Luke Akehurst is a leading member of the moderate Labour First group. Anne Black is more to the left but was supported by the Labour First as someone who was part of the broader spectrum of the Labour Party.
Luke Akehurst writes:
NEC Report - 11 February 2021
Although there have been the NEC Away Day and a special meeting to deal with the EHRC Action Plan, this was the first ordinary full NEC meeting I have attended since my election back onto the NEC in November.
Apparently, it was a better meeting that others in 2020 had been. The mind boggles about what they were like if this was a “better” one. Presumably, any improvement is down to the changed political balance. There is now a clear working majority that supports the leadership, making any votes that are forced performative displays of victimhood by the Hard Left for the benefit of their reports to the (rapidly dwindling based on the results of recent CLP AGMs) Momentum email list.
When I served on the NEC from 2010 to 2012 it was characterised by being a friendly, collegiate body, where people from across the spectrum of party opinion looked for issues where they could work together, treated each other respectfully, and were polite and positive towards the leadership and the General Secretary.
This longstanding culture has been broken and needs to be restored. I am assured by people who have served in the interim that the breakdown in good manners and professional behaviour is very recent, and that despite profound concerns about his leadership, moderate NEC members treated Jeremy Corbyn with respect and courtesy.
Now we have a situation where the majority on the NEC are behaving in a comradely, professional way and a minority are being relentlessly uncomradely.
The six and a half hours of the NEC meeting included large sections where the time of people of good will who are trying to make Labour electable was wasted in order for people who don’t want Keir to succeed to undermine him with a litany of negativity.
Time, because of what members choose to focus their questions on, is disproportionately spent on attack lines about confected internal cause celebres that excite the hyper-active, have already been extensively aired on social media and are of very little interest to the mass of party members let alone Labour or potentially Labour voters (whether Keir should appear next to our national flag, the end of the Community Organising Unit, suspensions for ignoring instructions about non-competent business, Jeremy Corbyn’s disciplinary case, something that Lord Falconer has said). Rather less time is spent making positive proposals or offering constructive scrutiny that might help the party staff with their immediate and huge task of rebuilding a party traumatised by the Corbyn era and winning the bumper lot of elections that are happening in May.
It is like having an opposition party inside the NEC meeting trying actively to damage the party. On occasion people were overtly personally rude as well.
I think this is a terrible waste. There are talented people from across the political spectrum on the NEC. If everyone played their role as team players we could achieve so much more, and in fact the left of the party would be far more likely to advance its agenda by being collegiate and constructive.
This is not a good use of Keir, Angela or David’s time, and their forbearance, dignity and calm in putting up with this nonsense is extraordinary, as is Margaret Beckett’s skill as chair.
Keir’s report was delivered from Heathrow where he had been meeting Unite union reps in solidarity with their dispute over fire and rehire. He outlined Labour’s approach to the Budget on 3 March and to the May elections, stressing that we want to “build forward” to a different, more equal future, rather than “build back” to the pre-Covid world as the Tories want. Keir said Labour will be fleshing out the detail of our practical “Recovery and Rebuild” policy proposals, which are in the three areas of health and wellbeing, the economy, and redistributing power.
Keir reported that Labour had forced Opposition Day debates on topics that were important to raise in Parliament and divided Tory MPs: fire and rehire, Universal Credit and Cladding.
In the Q&A I asked Keir to emulate the Biden campaign by consistently driving home the message about the need to sign up for postal votes.
Keir was on incredible form and dealt with all the questions, positive and negative, with great answers.
Angela Rayner’s report focused on campaigning but again there were silly attempts by the Hard Left to extract damaging answers, such as asking for foolhardy predictions about May’s elections. Have these people never heard of expectation management? I was pleased that Angela specifically picked up on my theme about postal voting and set out steps that are being taken.
David Evans read out a letter from the Forde Inquiry, saying they had had to pause publication of their report while the Information Commissioner’s Office conducted an investigation into the data breach associated with the leak that Forde was investigating. The report has already been delayed because the panel has conducted so many interviews and considered so many submissions. The letter has now been published on the Forde Inquiry website:
https://www.fordeinquiry.org/forde-inquiry-update/David also covered progress on the Organise to Win 2024 programme of organisational change, staff diversity, and the EHRC Action Plan, where he reported on creation of an Antisemitism Advisory Board (biographies here:
https://labour.org.uk/antisemitism/action-plan/ ) and said training for staff and the NEC would be completed by 29 April.
On the suspensions for ignoring guidance about non-competent business about antisemitism there had been no blanket policy of suspensions, they had been on a case-by-case basis and were being resolved by Disputes Panel hearings. The key issue was that the EHRC Report had made the Labour Party legally responsible for the actions of its “agents” down to the level of councillors and branch and CLP officers. David said he would, after consulting the NEC, recast and reissue an updated set of guidance in order for CLPs to be able to frame discussions about antisemitism in a safe and inclusive way. He would also change the disciplinary process so that members could be issued with reminders of conduct and formal warnings without them having to be suspended.
I welcomed David’s proposed change to the disciplinary process as I don’t think it is fair for people breaching the rules in less serious cases to lose their right to hold office for months and eventually only get a written reprimand. But I made it clear that I supported the party having taken the action then available to it to stop uncontrolled debates about issues around antisemitism, which could have created flash points that would have caused a hostile environment for Jewish members and could have led to further legal and EHRC problems for the party. I said that many members had contacted me demanding the party take action to tackle the unpleasant culture in their CLPs and desperately wanted positive debates about policy and campaigning, not meeting after acrimonious meeting focused on the debate around antisemitism and the disciplinary process.
The membership report revealed we now have over 512,000 members, 19% of whom have joined since the start of 2020. I urged the party to work with affiliated unions to bring union members into full individual membership to redress the longstanding disproportionate bias in the party’s membership towards older middle class white male graduates and the London and South East regions.
We were given an update on the review of how the party makes policy, which will now move to a period of focussed engagement led by Angela, with rule changes to be proposed at Annual Conference. David said he was committed to there being a 2021 Annual Conference but Covid meant there were still two scenarios, a full conference and a socially distant one.
The most important item from my point of view was the update on the May elections, presented by the newly appointed Executive Director Elections & Field Delivery, Anna Hutchinson. This is a uniquely challenging double set of elections, with the added complication of Covid meaning that doorstep campaigning is unlikely to be possible and in-person voters will be told to wear a mask and even take their own pen or pencil! The party’s top priorities are maximising the number of postal voters, which we are describing as “early voters” as postal voting has connotations of being for older people only; and using the newly upgraded Dialogue phone canvassing. It was fantastic to hear that as much canvassing is now being done via Dialogue as was being done conventionally pre-lockdown. I was pleased that Anna responded positively to my suggestion of greater use of twinning and targeting of key marginal areas given that this is particularly easy when almost all the work is being done by phone. She said the party will be pushing a message to CLPs that every third Dialogue session they run should be in support of a marginal area.
We agreed that in Sandwell, where there has been a lot of local infighting (largely unrelated to national left vs. right conflicts), to ensure the council candidate selections are run fairly they should be untaken by panels consisting of regional appointees, and we added two of our own NEC colleagues, Nick Forbes and James Asser, to the panel line-ups.
A working group to come up with a model for re-establishing a student wing of the Labour Party was agreed. I was very pleased to be appointed to serve on this as I am a former National Secretary of Labour Students.
We agreed that overseas members in the Labour International CLP should be allowed to pay the concessionary membership fee if they are unwaged, when previously all overseas members had been charged the full rate.
Finally, we agreed to sign up the Labour Party to the employer aspects of the Armed Forces Covenant.
Anne Black (Independent)
NEC Report, 11 February 2021
Keir Starmer joined from Heathrow where he was supporting Unite members, on strike against plans to fire and rehire them on worse conditions. He stressed the importance of the May elections. With Scotland, Wales, London, councils, mayors, police and crime commissioners, and all the 2020 contests rolled in, this was the biggest test outside a UK general election. With normal campaigning on pause, phone canvassing was central. Before then the budget on 3 March would present clear choices. The last year had a huge impact on families and jobs, and Labour had challenged the government on its slowness, incompetence and indecision, its underfunding of public services, and the underlying structural inequalities laid bare by the pandemic. The Tories would go back to the broken past, while Labour would build forwards, just as the 1945 Labour government created a better society out of the rubble of war. Policies on health and wellbeing, power, and the economy would be developed across the movement. In parliament Labour had used opposition day debates to call for maintaining the £20 uplift to universal credit and to highlight the scandal of unsafe cladding still in place four years after Grenfell. The Tories don’t even bother to turn up.
Responding to comments, Keir Starmer agreed that postal votes were critical, job retention schemes should be extended before they expire, public service workers deserved pay rises, and long Covid was a growing concern. The low level of statutory sick pay was the biggest reason for Covid-positive people not self-isolating and not passing on contact details for friends. The deepest form of patriotism was the desire for a better country, the cause for which we all campaign. Labour aspired to govern for the whole of the United Kingdom, and using the national flag was inclusive and appropriate.
I asked about the spycops (covert and human intelligence sources) bill. Keir Starmer said it was impossible to tackle terrorism, criminal gangs or people-trafficking without undercover agents. Currently these agents operate entirely outwith the law, and though not flawless the bill would put them on a statutory footing, with safeguards. No action could be authorised if it breached the human rights act, and it was not true that the bill legitimised murder, torture or sexual violence. I also asked for direct mailings to members, similar to the excellent local government briefings, highlighting the work of Labour MPs and explaining frontbench positions. Most of us have no other source of information.
On schools Keir Starmer assured the NEC that he was in frequent contact with the education unions. Far from uncritically following the government, Labour had challenged Boris Johnson over personal and protective equipment, discharging Covid-positive patients into care homes, failings in test / trace / isolate, and circuit-breakers, on all of which the Tories subsequently changed position, as well as continuing to hold them to account through opposition day debates. On protests by Indian farmers he would speak again with Stephen Kinnock, who was leading for Labour. He ended by offering to talk further with individuals, and most NEC members agreed that all efforts should go into flat-out campaigning for May.
Deputy Leader’s Report
Angela Rayner continued the election theme, and shared NEC members’ concerns about safety for voters and election workers. Labour had made some progress on increasing the diversity of candidates, but there was much more to do. Parties with rich donors able to pay postage for direct mails should not gain an unfair advantage. She had visited a vaccination centre, met Black leaders in Birmingham, and supported GMB workers at British Gas also facing fire-and-rehire threats. Labour would keep pushing on free school meals and Tory cronyism. She asked the NEC to send solidarity to Charlotte Nichols, MP for Warrington North, who had received anti-semitic abuse from a Tory town council candidate.
Members said that much was still unclear. Do police and crime commissioner candidates still need 100 signatures, could people sign up electronically for postal votes, how will get-out-the-vote work on election day? For polling stations a few bottles of bleach and bring-your-own-pencil was not a plan. The government should be pressed to restore the scheme for access to elected office and funding for deaf and disabled people, and the party should consider what more it could do to support disabled members.
Others asked about the future of community organisers, a recurring theme of the meeting. As a UNISON activist Angela helped to lead the change to an organising culture which was so central to fighting austerity, and she was totally committed to the principles. (In my view year-round doorstep discussions with voters, being rooted in local communities and going beyond box-ticking voter-ID are what Labour activists and representatives should be doing anyway.) She was happy to help with signing up young people for postal votes, and praised the Welsh Labour government for leading the way on controlling the coronavirus.
Why Are We Waiting?
NEC members were stunned to hear the latest from the Forde inquiry into last year’s leaked report, though someone was not too stunned to forward the “confidential” letter to LabourList and the Guardian within minutes. Its publication will now wait till the information commissioner’s office (ICO) has finished investigating the same leak, to avoid potentially prejudicing their work. I am (almost) speechless, but I can give categoric assurances that absolutely no-one in the leadership or the party wants this dragging on. Until the truth is out, slurs and falsehoods will continue to be stated as facts, within the NEC and beyond.
As the inquiry is independent the party cannot and would not interfere or make demands. However this raises questions about moving towards independent complaints procedures. The party’s internal processes may be slow, but as an NEC representative I can still talk to staff about where cases have got stuck. Independence has its drawbacks. Meanwhile we were reminded that Forde’s terms of reference never delegated the NEC’s powers to adjudicate on individual disciplinary issues, and it is entirely proper for these to be heard by the disputes panels, as with any other allegations.
Internal Matters
General secretary David Evans gave an update on organisational changes. A diversity and inclusion board, staff equalities networks, equality audits and improved recruitment practices were in hand, and the party was engaging with the Labour Women’s Network, the Labour Muslim Network, and anti-Black racism movements. Training in anti-semitism would be provided to NEC members.
Along with other constituency representatives I raised the number of suspensions, the time taken to resolve them, the singling out of local chairs and secretaries, and the effects on those who had been selected as candidates, some of whom were being replaced before their cases were settled. Unfortunately banning people from discussing something is guaranteed to make them want to talk about nothing else.
David Evans reminded the NEC that the EHRC (equalities and human rights commission) held the national party legally responsible for the actions of its “agents”, defined very broadly to include MPs, councillors, candidates and local role-holders. The culture had to be corrected but free speech was indeed important, and he would recast the guidance in a safe and inclusive manner. This would go to NEC officers for approval, and though I am in the officers’ group I supported those who argued for involving the whole NEC.
David also said that where it was clear that the reported behaviour would not lead to serious sanctions, a suspension would not have to be imposed, something which I thought was already the case. The disproportionate impact on selected candidates was recognised, but sadly not remedied. A paper outlining what powers were delegated, and to whom, would come to the NEC in May.
Membership figures showed some decline from the highest-ever level in January 2020, but still well above the 430,359 total in November 2019. Overall more than 56% of members are male, and the proportions who self-identify as BAME (black, Asian and minority ethnic) or disabled are below population levels, though this might be improved by more proactive data collection. The percentage of BAME members who had lapsed or resigned was about the same as the percentage for membership as a whole.
Party Democracy
More than 2,000 submissions on improving policy-making processes had been received, with concerns that current structures, and connections between the national policy forum, conference and the manifesto, were opaque. There was also wide recognition that Labour members are not necessarily representative of the public as a whole. The next phase of consultation was planned to run to early May, but I got this extended to June so that local parties can discuss it after the elections.
There will be a fully-democratic online women’s conference in June, but whether annual conference can meet wholly or partly in person is still in doubt. Compositing would be a challenge, though the problems are compounded by leaving the deadline for motions at 13 September. This was necessary when motions had to meet the arbitrary “contemporary” criteria by referring to something happening after 1 August, but now that has been ditched the cutoff could be earlier, and allow for more sensible deliberation.
Looking Forward …
By the time we considered detailed plans for the May elections the meeting was entering its fifth hour, though some of the broader issues had already been covered. Representatives from Scotland and Wales, both facing general elections, spoke about their specific national challenges. Twinning and targeting should be easier while everyone is online rather than travelling, and disabled members must be fully included. I believe that accessibility issues with Dialogue, the phone-canvassing tool, are being addressed.
Returning to the NEC’s own terms of reference, we agreed that papers should be circulated seven days before meetings. Getting nerdy, I am concerned that subcommittee minutes and officers’ decisions no longer come to the next NEC in draft but have to be confirmed by their subcommittee first. With fewer meetings overall, this leaves many NEC members outside the loop for months. While I agree that the number of meetings is unlikely to correlate positively with electoral success, lengthy gaps mean that more decisions are taken by committee chairs or smaller and less accountable groups. There are no scheduled NEC meetings between 11 February and 25 May.
Vacancies on various committees and working groups were filled on the pleasingly consensual basis of accepting everyone who was interested. The group charged with developing a new structure for student members includes the NEC chair, vice-chair, treasurer, youth representative, socialist societies representative, the deputy leader/party chair, Michael Wheeler from the NEC trade union section, Luke Akehurst and Gemma Bolton from the CLP section, and the elected student representatives from the Young Labour national committee.
The only disagreement was in deciding which NEC members should join two West Midlands executive members in selecting candidates in Sandwell. I voted for Yasmine Dar, so that the NEC representatives would include a woman and a person of colour, but lost 18-14. However we are promised that immediately after May the new Sandwell Labour group will hold their AGM and a proper Sandwell local government committee will be constituted and empowered to manage future selections.
More about Money
A paper on CLP fees and funding, arising from the 2018 democracy review, had been deferred before and was now seriously out of date. As I have said many times the 2011 Refounding Labour settlement needs a root-and-branch review. I was shocked to hear that Scottish CLPs are charged £600 or more to affiliate to Scottish Labour, way above the English regional fees of up to £270, and on a much smaller membership. So a CLP with 280 members receives £770 from membership subscriptions and then gets a bill for £660 before paying for a single leaflet.
I am initially asking for the Euro-levy to be refunded on the same flat-rate basis as it was collected, which should amount to over £1,000 per CLP. Also conference 2020 was cancelled so the £116 delegate fee should be credited as well. But more fundamental reforms and a fairer, more sustainable system are needed. The NEC did, however, agree that members of Labour International should be eligible for reduced membership rates on the same basis as other members, now they no longer require expensive postage.
And finally the NEC agreed to commit to the armed forces covenant, supporting the employment of veterans, reservists and service spouses and partners, and noted a report on Labour Connected.
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