By David Pavett

The time-scale and participation

In her NEC report of 30 January 2023 Ann Black pointed to some serious problems in the current round of National Policy Forum consultations. The report is quite long and deals with NPF issues in its final section. She points out that there are “ two distinct phases between now and annual conference”. In the first phase

“Six short papers focusing on aspects of each policy commission’s work will be circulated to all members on Monday January 30th 2023, and CLPs, branches, trade unions and other stakeholders will be able to submit comments by Friday March 17th 2023.”

Some members have received this information but others have not. Branches and CLPs would have to move pretty quickly to get a decent discussion going and send in a response in that time. Members participation in the process is limited to what they can do in their branches and CLP’s prior to March 17^th. After that there will no way for commenting on the finalised documents before they go to Annual Conference 2023.

Ann Black comments on the process as follows:

“While we are required to reflect the strength of feeling among our constituents, there is no clear mechanism for constituency representatives to do this. In 2014, the last full cycle, CLPs had the full text for three months and could send in ten amendments each. These were collated centrally and CLP representatives within each region looked at what they said, shared them out, and took them into the final NPF meeting.

“This year, Zoom calls may be arranged between NPF representatives and CLP policy officers, but there will be no time for most CLPs to agree collective priorities or amendments, and NPF members and CLPs cannot easily contact each other.”

The window of opportunity for members to participate in the formation of Party policy via the NPF is thus extremely small.

The reports

There are six NPF Commission reports which vary in length from 1700 to 2200 words. They are as follows (the name of the Commission is in bold):

• A green & digital future – delivering growth;
• Better jobs and better work – the everyday economy;
• Safe & secure communities – empowered communities;
• Public services that work from the start – prevention, early intervention and better public services for all;
• A future where families come first – supporting families;
• Britain in the world – Labour’s progressive trade policy.

The structure of the documents

It is not possible to comment on all the six NPF reports in a short article. The comments below will consider the structure of the reports and comment on their contents so as to suggest possible responses.

All the documents have four section with the following titles: (1) Introduction; (2) Questions; (3) Context; (4) The future under Labour. The fourth section is where you might expect to find policy proposals.

(1) The Introduction to each paper is a formulaic section which tells the reader that this is the final year of Labour’s current policy cycle. The headings of the previous four years papers are given but without information on what was agreed. Finally, readers are exhorted to take part in the process.

(2) Every report has seven (formulaic) questions. Question 6 is about the policy implications w.r.t. the Equality Act 2010. Question 7 asks about the policy implications for devolved administrations and local government.

The remaining five questions are so general that they invite a wide range of responses. This will no doubt be seen as grounds to ignore them. The remaining questions have no policy focus and are of the type “What can Labour do to make policy X work for everyone?” Delivering Growth ask “How can science and technology policy support al regions and nations in the UK?” Similarly The everyday economy has “How can Labour strengthen sectors that make up the everyday economy?” Likewise for the other questions. It  should come as no surprise that these questions come before the context and content sections.

(3) The Context section is meant to set the scene for what in the final section on The future under Labour purports to be the proposals put to members for their consideration. What is written about the context needs to be read very closely asking “is that true?” or even “what does that mean?” For example, we are told in the Delivering Growth paper that Russia’s invasion of the Ukraine has exposed how insecure the UK’s energy system has become…” Has it? In 2021 the UK was getting only 5% of its fuel from Russia and that has now fallen to zero.. Our energy prices have not been increased because our suppliers costs of producing have gone up but because they operate through the capitalist world market. The documents also lack any references for the claims made in them. Where costs are given there are no calculations. The unreliability of the documents can be seen by checking the claims made.

(4) The most important section, one would hope, is the final one appearing to present the Labour’s policy proposals for this year’s NPF exercise. However, across the six reports these policy sections turn out to be an undifferentiated mish-mash of:

(a) statements of existing policy (e.g. “Labour has also set out plans to …”)

(b) discussion yet to come (e.g. “this consultation cycle will look in more details at how the UK can …”)

(c) vague commitments with no detail (e.g. “A Labour government would also address the huge power some digital platforms have …”)

(d) nonsense (e.g. “Labour … will protect an NHS free at the point of use …” – have the authors of the document gone for an NHS dental check-up or picked up prescription medicines from a pharmacy?)

(e) commitments without any details about how they would be realised (“The next Labour government will introduce an ambitious plan to improve mental health care”)

(f) contradictory commitments (e.g. wanting to put communities in charge of their areas and significantly shortening the time allowed for questioning planning decisions)

(g) extreme vagueness (e.g. “The cycle will look …[to]…build out an evidence base, looking at how [we] can make Britain’s taxation system fairer for everyone …”)

Without extensive research it is generally impossible to work out what is actually constitutes a new policy for consideration in any of these reports.

Responding to the reports

Reading through the reports one starts to wonder if the reports represent a genuine effort to consult. Most political activists, on the left at least, will recognise the problem. We are all familiar with “consultations” designed to reach a pre-determined outcome. It is all too easy to ignore response that don’t fit that aim.

I suggest that:

(a) We should respond in detail to the reports we feel most confident to deal with because this is essential for our own political understanding of current developments in the Labour Party. Even if we are ignored this can advance our own understanding – especially if our thoughts are shared.

(b) We should look for pinch-points in terms of current debate where it may be particularly difficult to ignore members’ views. With this in mind, here are a few points about each of the papers. These are clearly in no way exhaustive.

(1) Delivering Growth. The idea of a Green a Digital Commission should be questioned. The word “Digital” here is just a buzz word and not a part of serious analysis. It arbitrarily excludes activities which have little or nothing to do with digitisation for no good reason.

Labour should overcome its (imperial?) obsession to “lead the world once again”? Why is performing to a high standard not good enough?

Most of the digital economy section is without clear meaning. Thus on digital technology we’re told “Labour would act to ensure that systems are safe, trustworthy and reliable…” Really? How?

The transport section tells us that rail operators are “profiting from failure” and that Labour would bring them back into public ownership. Good, but doesn’t the same logic apply to mail, energy and water, (all of which are no less digital than trains!)

(2) The everyday economy. What is the “everyday economy”? Look at the definition offered (“those parts of the economy which keep our country moving and society functioning”). What is not included? What is  excluded is considerations of the macro-economics required for evaluating the economic system as a whole.

We read “Labour has set out bold and credible proposals to grow the economy”. Job done, apparently. But Claims for GB Energy as a publicly owned national energy champion need to be questioned (see this LabourList article).

Most of the commitments are about doing something later on “This years discussion will look in further detail at some of the issues…”). This is an opportunity to remind the NPF of the pledges Keir Starmer made to get elected as Labour Leader.

(3) Empowered communities. “Labour has already pledged to bring back neighbourhood policing…” This is not a policy proposal. Look carefully at all 15 paragraphs of The future under Labour section to see if there is a new proposal anywhere.

The final paragraph concerns “community participation in politics”. The view of the majority of Labour members, and Labour Conference 2022, is that electoral reform leading to some form of proportional representation is required for this. How is it that there is no mention of this?

(4) Prevention, early intervention and better public services for all. Some issues: The NHS is not universally “free at the point of use” as claimed. Policy claims are made with no costing details. There are more promises of discussion to come (“Labour is developing detailed policy…”, “Once in government, Labour will embark on a plan for reform…”, “The next Labour government will roll out an ambitious school improvement plan”).

There are then repeats of existing policy (“Labour has set out its priorities for reform…”)

Here responses could comment on the need to reintegrate academies into a local authority framework and the need  for an informed national dialogue on education. Is it, for example, true that so many state schools work without providing subject textbooks?

(5) Supporting families. House prices are said now to be nine times higher than average earnings. No effort is made to say why this has happened (increasing value of land) nor therefore to propose what can be done about it. The fall in council house building under the Conservatives is mentioned but not the fact that it reached its lowest level under the last Labour administrations. Labour needs to take an honest look its own housing record and its lack of analysis of the effects of aiming to increasing private house ownership as opposed to the share of council housing. There are a number of uncosted expenditure claims in this report which need to be questioned.

And why, by the way, should families “come first”? What does this say about Labour concern for all those without family support? Are they now second class in support terms?

(6) Labour’s progressive trade policy. The international section of the NPF is generally the weakest and it is no different this year. Of the sixteen paragraphs in the final (policy) section I could see no new proposal at all. We read in this section “Worker’s rights must be at the heart of Britain’s trade policy. Labour opposes a global race to the bottom on standards and rights.” That’s good, but doesn’t it imply that Labour should move beyond its present stance of undoing anti-trade union legislation back to 2016 and that it should reverse such legislation going back to the 1980s? 

Responses could make suggestions of developing mutually beneficial agreements with countries supplying migrant labour so that workers could come to the UK for an agreed period during which they would acquire skills needed by the donor country before returning home. Generally, what is lacking is any sort of socialist and international perspective on how we should be dealing with other countries.

David Pavett is a retired science teacher and a member of Brentford & Isleworth CLP

Image: Keir Starmer. Source: https://api20170418155059.azure-api.net/photo/X9dwBvuR.jpeg?crop=MCU_3:2&quality=80&download=true. Author: Chris McAndrew, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license.

A condensed version of the NPF documents is below