by Chris McLaughlin
GORDON BROWN is prepared to offer a commitment to include legislation on temporary and agency workers in this year’s Queen’s Speech if the unions agree to take part in an independent commission on their rights and conditions.
The compromise is expected to be held out in negotiations about the terms of reference for the commission, which would include representatives from the CBI and the TUC. Mr Brown is pushing the commission as an alternative to a backbench Bill, supported by unions and Labour MPs, which is currently before Parliament but is likely to fall without Government support.
Unions are wary of the commission, arguing that it is unnecessary given the party’s manifesto commitment on temporary and agency workers and that the outcome would be compromised by the inevitable opposition of employers who claim the move would lose jobs.
They will also raise doubts over how a Queen’s Speech pledge would translate into practical proposals.
Mr Brown believes the commission is the only way to get a working consensus on the issue and at the same time overcome entrenched objections from ministers including Pat McFadden and his boss at Business and Enterprise, John Hutton.
The issue is one of several significant lines of tension between the unions and Number 10, with the post of party general secretary set to be decided next week, as the question of party funding becomes critical.
Tribune has learned that the party is too short of cash to carry through the Prime Minister’s reform of the policy-making process agreed less than a year ago.
Amid fears that the party is technically insolvent, and therefore being run illegally, moves to bring grassroots activists into talks with ministers and officials to thrash out policy for this year’s annual conference have been hampered by what Mr McFadden, who chairs the National Policy Forum, has described as a “lack of resources”.
One senior party figure said: “Gordon sincerely wants the process agreed at last year’s conference to involve more members. But the situation is so bad that, for example, we don’t even have enough money to book the rooms that we would need to bring people together in the way that was envisaged.”
The reforms are designed to allow movers and backers of conference motions to take part in the development of policies between conferences.
Ann Black, a Grassroots Alliance constituency member of the party’s national executive, called for greater involvement of members and more feedback from the party and Government and was told by Mr McFadden that the party did not have the resources to meet requirements.
