by René Lavanchy
LABOUR Party members have begun to examine draft policy documents intended to be the basis of the party’s manifesto at the next general election.
Constituency parties are considering how to amend the documents, which were sent out by the party office at the beginning of this month, before forwarding them to the National Policy Forum, who prepare the documents for conference.
But one set of model amendments has already been circulated to CLPs in the hope that they will adopt them. Pressure group Defend Council Housing is seeking to change the draft policies in the communities paper, to help councils to build more publicly owned housing.
DCH chair Alan Walter told Tribune that, within four hours of sending out his model amendments – which call for a “level playing field” between councils and private builders of social housing, allowing them to access the same grants – he had received six positive replies from CLPs.
He said: “They’re [the paper’s authors] deliberately using a language to say councils will be able to build. They don’t say councils can’t access social housing grant. They say only ALMOs [arms-length management organisations] and special purpose vehicles will. The homes they build will not be social homes… that’s not understood by Labour Party members.”
Another policy area likely to receive intense interest is migration and citizenship. The citizenship policy paper closely follows current Government policy on introducing an Australian-style points system for economic migrants and requiring them to contribute to the cost of their own naturalisation.
A proposal in the paper says: “We propose introducing a new staged route to citizenship which will create a new probationary period… where migrants must demonstrate their contribution to the UK at every stage or leave the country.” Members of Labour’s citizenship policy commission previously criticised such plans for their negative language.
Alon Or-bach, NPF representative for London CLPs, said: “I think we’ve managed to tone down some of the language that’s in there. There’s still question marks over how active citizenship will be determined.”
“On citizenship my biggest concern was that, in order to progress, migrants would be compelled to do voluntary service, which is very unrealistic to migrants, many of whom are working hard to make ends meet.”
CLP secretaries have until June 20 to submit unlimited amendments to the policy documents through the Labour Party website. NPF members told Tribune that resources for handling the responses were tight, but it would not be an “endemic” problem.
NPF member Ann Black said: “In a CLP there needs to be one person who has experience of IT. I really don’t think you can expect party staff to cope with sheets of paper in envelopes.”
