Monday 8 July 2013

Miliband urges union links overhaul

Source BBC News@ tienganhvui.com


Ed MilibandEd Miliband will criticise union leaders for encouraging "machine politics"


Ed Miliband will promise to make politics more "open, transparent and trusted" by reforming Labour's relationship with trade unions.


The party leader will pledge to abolish the automatic "affiliation" fee paid by three million union members to Labour.


Mr Miliband will also say the selection of parliamentary candidates should be widened, with the general public helping to choose them.


It follows a row with the Unite union over picking a candidate in Falkirk.


Unite, one of the party's biggest donors, is accused of signing up its members to Labour in Falkirk - some without their knowledge - in an effort to get its preferred candidate selected.


The union's leader Len McCluskey denies people were recruited without knowing about it, and says Unite worked within the rules.


'Death throes'

In his speech on Tuesday, Mr Miliband will call for a system which is "open, transparent and trusted - exactly the opposite of the politics we saw in Falkirk. That was a politics closed, a politics of the machine, a politics hated - and rightly so.


"What we saw in Falkirk is part of the death throes of the old politics. It is a symbol of what is wrong with politics. I want to build a better Labour Party - and build a better politics for Britain."


He will call for an end to affiliation fees - where members of supportive unions pay an automatic levy to Labour unless they opt out - and instead involve only those who "deliberately" choose to join the party.


The fees are worth about £8m a year to Labour. Insiders estimate making them non-automatic would cost the party about £5m.


Mr Miliband will say: "We need to do more, not less, to mobilise individual trade union members to be part of our party: the three million shop workers, nurses, engineers, bus drivers, construction workers, people from the public and private sector, that are affiliated to the Labour Party.


"The problem is not that these ordinary working men and women dominate the Labour Party. The problem is that they are not properly part of all that we do. They are not members of local parties; they are not active in our campaigns."


The Labour leader will argue that unions should have political funds "for all kinds of campaigns and activities as they choose" but individual members should not pay Labour any fees "unless they have deliberately chosen to do so".


He will add: "I believe we need people to be able to make a more active, individual, choice on whether they affiliate to the Labour Party.


"So we need to set a new direction in our relationship with trade union members in which they choose to join Labour through the affiliation fee: they would actively choose to be individually affiliated members of the Labour Party and they would no longer be automatically affiliated."


'Strict'

This could raise the current Labour membership from the current 200,000 to a "far higher number", Mr Miliband will say.


He will also promise to look at the idea of holding open "primaries", where all adults, not just party members, can vote for the selection of a candidate in their constituency.


He will say such a system will be used to select Labour's runner for the London mayoralty in 2016.


Mr Miliband will argue the party should impose a code of conduct for those seeking selection and "strict" spending limits on them and organisations backing them.


There must also be "standard constituency agreements with trade unions so that no-one can be subjected to undue local pressure", he will say.


An internal party inquiry found evidence Unite officials had signed up new members without their knowledge, breaching party rules, to try and get their favoured candidate elected. Mr McCluskey has said he has "no trust" in the probe.


Labour has insisted the episode is a one-off but said it showed the need for wider reforms to candidate selection.


The Conservatives have said Labour must publish the Falkirk report and refuse to take any more money from the unions until an entirely new system of funding is agreed.





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