Campaign for Labour Party Democracy Model Motions (2021) 

Below is the second tranche of model motions the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy is encouraging party members to consider submitting to annual party conference through their CLPs.

All motions need to be 250 words or below, and submitted by 5pm, Monday 13th September 2021. The word counts indicated below do not include the motion titles.

The motions can also be downloaded here in Word and here in PDF and viewed online as a Google Doc here. The PDF and Word versions can also be downloaded at the bottom of this page.

Motion Topics:

• Build Council Housing and End Homelessness (Labour Campaign for Council Housing)
• Oppose Integrated Care Systems in the English NHS
• A Green New Deal to Respond to the Climate, Economic, and Social Crises
• For a Fair, Socialist and Progressive Approach to Council Tax
• For a Poverty Emergency Approach to Crisis Recovery and Income Inequality
• Land Value Tax
• Review Personal Independent Payment to Make it Fit for Purpose
• Local Government Cuts – Building the Resistance

Build Council Housing and End Homelessness (Labour Campaign for Council Housing)

Conference Notes:

• The Covid-19 pandemic has aggravated the severe economic and health impacts of the housing crisis. In December 2020 the Health Foundation identified that prior to the pandemic a third of households in England had housing problems relating to overcrowding, affordability and poor quality housing. Overcrowding has been a key factor in the spread of Covid19.
• Prior to the pandemic, thousands of households were struggling with their housing costs in the un-affordable and insecure private rented sector. As a result of Covid19 many more households have suffered reduced income, with 450,000 additional households falling behind on their housing payments.
• When the temporary ban on evictions was lifted the Resolution Foundation revealed that 400,000 renting households had been served with eviction notices and millions more were worried about their housing costs. The ending of the Furlough scheme will make matters worse, with predictions of a wave of evictions and a huge increase in homelessness.
• The Conservative government has done little to support those struggling to access decent, affordable and secure housing to rent.

Conference, therefore, calls upon the Labour Party to demand that the government takes action now to end the housing crisis by:

• Delivering the building of 150,000 social rent homes each year, including 100,000 council homes, funded by £10 billion grant a year.
• Ending ‘right to buy’.
• Reviewing council housing debt to address underfunding of housing Revenue accounts.

Conference also calls upon Labour to place these actions at the centre of its housing policies.

 (250 Words)

Oppose Integrated Care Systems in the English NHS

Conference notes:

●      The Tory Government plans to establish unaccountable Integrated Care System boards on a statutory basis with binding plans.

Conference believes:

●      Integrated Care Systems will mean more private contracts, lower standards through professional deregulation, downskilling and more outsourcing of NHS jobs, reduced services (partially replaced by ‘digital’ options and volunteers) and significant spending cuts.

Conference resolves to:

●      Call on the Parliamentary Labour Party to vigorously oppose the establishment of ICSs and their roll-out in England

●      Support the end of the commercialisation of the NHS and social care services.

●      Restore our NHS and social care services to full public service provision

●      Actively alert local councillors and MPs to the threat posed by Integrated Care Systems and the dramatic loss of local accountability.

●      Begin a meaningful consultation with the public and Parliament to decide how health and social care services are provided in England.

●      Introduce legislation to end the destructive effects of the 2012 Health and Social Care Act and  to bring about a universal, comprehensive and publicly provided NHS and social care, free at the point of use and fit for the 21st century

●      To promote greater collaboration with the Labour Parties in the devolved nations to learn from their experiences in continuing to promote a public service NHS in their jurisdictions.

(212 Words)

A Green New Deal to Respond to the Climate, Economic, and Social Crises (Ver. 1)

Conference Notes:

●      We need a Green New Deal in which government must tackle poverty, income inequality, racial discrimination, and make reparations for its fossil fuel colonialism.

●      In the year of the United Nations COP26 climate talks in Glasgow, on current projections, global temperatures are set to rise in excess of 3°C this century.

●      The added need for a Covid recovery plan to address the challenge of the climate, economic, and social crises.

●      The disproportionate impact of climate change on the working class, low income and BAME communities, disabled people, and women in the UK and globally.

Conference Supports:

●      Young Labour’s call to ensure that a radical green new deal remains central to Labour Party policy;

●      Trade unions in developing a framework for a Just Transition;

●      A pro public response to climate change and environmental degradation;

●      The need to uphold the rights of migrants and displaced peoples in the UK and globally.

Conference calls for a socialist Green New Deal that includes:

●      A whole economy decarbonisation plan consistent with the imperatives of climate change science, that ensures clean air, water and energy, and healthy food as a basic human right;

●      Protections for workers and communities through a just transition including retraining and reskilling, real social protection, full consultation and collective bargaining with trade unions;

●      An end to fossil fuel subsidies and tax breaks;

●      A publicly run retrofit and insulation programme;

●      An anti-imperialist international programme that opposes all forms of oppression, and centres peace and diplomacy.

(244 Words)

A Green New Deal to Respond to the Climate, Economic, and Social Crises (Ver. 2)

Conference notes the fossil fuel based industrial revolution of the second half of the 19th century saw great wealth being accumulated by some, despite falling life expectancy in working class communities, horrific exploitation of workers and children, and crimes against humanity in the British Empire’s colonies.

Taking its name from Roosevelt’s New Deal of financial reforms and public works of the Great Depression of the 1930s, we need a Green New Deal for the approaching technological revolution of the 21st century.  We need a Green New Deal in which government must tackle poverty, income inequality and racial discrimination, as well as learning the lessons of the past.  We need climate, economic, and social justice.

Conference calls on the Labour Party to promote a Green New Deal in which government:

●      Dramatically reduces greenhouse gas emissions

●      Creates high-paying unionised jobs

●      Ensures that clean air, clean water and healthy food are basic human rights

●      And ends all forms of oppression

(157 Words)

For a Fair, Socialist and Progressive Approach to Council Tax

Austerity and the current unprecedented crisis have required Labour Councils to work hard in minimising public disapproval whilst setting legally mandated balanced budgets, with minimal impact on those services our most disadvantaged communities rely upon and to minimise visible redundancies.

Realistically, this has meant many ‘hidden’ cuts have been necessitated; support thresholds have been raised, temporary contracts have not been renewed, incompatible services are being merged and public assets are earmarked for disposal, sometimes reframed as ‘wasteful’ or as community ownership opportunities.

From closing museums and galleries, to axing school crossing patrols, to closing swimming pools and golf courses, all avenues are on the table and council-owned companies have run into trouble requiring rescue measures.  As costs increase and revenue streams decline, at least 12 English councils have been in rescue talks with the government, in what could be the “tip of the iceberg”, according to experts, as the Covid-19 pandemic lays waste to local authority finances.

We call on the party leadership to encourage and financially support Labour Councils to hold referenda locally on progressive Council Tax models.  One example to propose to the electorate might be that rates are frozen for the majority of the community, with a fairer and more wealth-proportionate increase being borne by those with the broadest shoulders and a COVID-responsive recovery package established for low and middle-income residents in need and the services they rely on as a result of their poverty.

(238 Words)

For a Poverty Emergency Approach to Crisis Recovery and Income Inequality

The emerging data from the past year indicates that pre-existing unfair and disproportionate economic, health, housing and educational impacts of austerity across low income people of all equalities backgrounds have only intensified as a result of the crisis and will continue to.

An approach to recovery that fails to acknowledge and remedy the primary role of inadequate income as the predominant and primary driver of all the effects of poverty now sadly increasing is an inadequate and socially unjust approach.

People who can afford their rent or mortgage and to buy in additional help to support themselves and their children through the trauma of the past year, who have adequate and quality outdoor and indoor spaces, have not been impacted in the same way as those on low incomes.  COVID Recovery discourse and action devoid of a central focus on inadequate pay, insecure terms and conditions, the social injustice of cuts and freezes to in and out of work benefits, inadequate income overall and enforced reliance on profit-driven private landlords and services makes a mockery of any political claim to truly value equality.

We support the Poverty Emergency as put forward by Cheshire West and Chester Council in full and will prioritise funding to branches in low income areas to support the pro-active nurture by local party members a rights-based and community-ownership approach to creating a widespread grassroots, democratic, socially just and green alternative to the extractive economy.

(238 Words)

Land Value Tax

Conference knows that the economy is skewed in favour of the super-rich. Expensive homes lie empty because their owners are speculators. Development sites stand idle whilst there is a shortage of affordable homes. The talents of many are lost to society because they can’t afford premises to set up a business.

The Office of National Statistics estimates that land accounts for over 50% of the UK’s net worth – higher than any other G7 country. Other records show that just 1% of the population own 70% of UK land.

Conference recognises that concentrated landownership is the main source of wealth inequality and the reason why a decent home is unaffordable for many.

Current annual property taxes fall on occupiers and are based on the value of buildings, which wear out and require constant maintenance and renewal, in addition to land.

Council tax is so regressive that the owner of a Westminster mansion pays not much more than the tenant of a Weymouth bedsit. Many businesses, already paying high rents, are finding business rates unaffordable and driving them to bankruptcy.

Land Value Tax is paid by landowners and is the only way to fairly share land wealth. Even billionaires cannot hide land in tax havens. It would bring down land prices, as the higher the tax the lower the price. There would be no reason to hold houses and land out of use for speculative purposes.

Conference calls for the replacement of all current property taxes with a Land Value Tax.

(250 Words)

Review Personal Independent Payment to Make it Fit for Purpose

Conference Notes:

• Over 2.6 million people currently receive a Personal Independent Payment (PIP). It replaced Disability Living Allowance (DLA) for adults in 2013.
• PIP covers extra costs due to impairments affecting someone’s ability to carry out a broad range of everyday activities such as cooking, managing medication, reading, understanding and getting around.
• Only about 50% of claims for PIP, including those who previously received DLA, lead to an award.
• However, nearly three quarters of appeals against rejections are successful, raising serious concerns over the efficacy of the interview and assessment procedures. This is corroborated by recent Department of Work and Pensions figures showing that over a third of PIP assessment reports carried out by privatised firms were substandard.

Conference therefore agrees that Labour develops policies and campaigns to reform PIP to make it fit for purpose. In particular:

• Assessments should give greater weight than currently to challenges of leading an independent life due to serious illness, including mental illness, and neuro-diverse conditions such as autism and dyspraxia;
• There should be increased recognition of any difficulties an individual may have in taking medication or receiving therapy;
• The qualifying maximum distance which a person can walk for giving support in maintaining mobility, including provision of a mobility car, should be increased;
• Claimants must be interviewed and assessed by health professionals with relevant qualifications, knowledge and experience of all major conditions affecting the ability to lead an independent life.

(237 Words)

Supporting arguments

In 2013 Personal Independence Payment (PIP) replaced Disability Living Allowance.LA, which was paid to over 3.25 million people.

PIP is awarded on the basis of a health professional interviewing claimants and completing an assessment form based on an interview questionnaire. Claimants are given points for difficulties with 10 key daily living activities including cooking, managing medication/therapy, washing, bathing, dressing, communication, reading and understanding and two mobility activities – planning and following a journey and moving around.

Points are awarded based on the degree of difficulty the claimant has in carrying out the specified activity. 8 to 11 points qualifies for the standard rate for Daily Living and 12 points or more gives an enhanced rate. Similarly, to qualify for the mobility component of the benefit you have to get from 8 to 11 points for the standard rate or 12 points or more for the enhanced rate.

Health professionals undertaking the interviews may not have sufficient knowledge to identify or understand how certain mental illness and/or neuro-diverse conditions can adversely impact on independent living. Moreover, the questionnaire gives insufficient descriptions and weight for many of these conditions.

Furthermore, there are examples how former Disability Living Allowance claimants were disadvantaged by the transition to PIP. For instance, under the DLA scheme, entitlement to a mobility car would apply if he or she could walk no more than 50 metres but now this maximum is reduced to only 20 metres.

The current process is generally too rigid and narrow to recognise the full spectrum of conditions and challenges impacting on independent living. It is highly significant that on appeal nearly three quarters of original decisions in refusing the benefit are reversed; the appeal panel often includes doctors with greater experience, empathy and knowledge in dealing with, for example, the complexity of neuro-diverse conditions such as autism and dyspraxia.

Local Government Cuts – Building the Resistance

Conference notes that local government is suffering a new phase of cuts. Councils face an unprecedented financial crisis because of ten years of cuts and the failure of the government to provide funding necessary to cover the financial impact of the pandemic.

Conference recognises our criticism of cuts requires action and not just words. Therefore, Labour commits to building a campaign together with trade unions, community and tenant organisations for funding necessary to not only stop, but reverse cuts. As a minimum, Labour will demand of the government that it:

• Honour its commitment to fully fund councils for the extra costs of dealing with the pandemic and lost revenue resulting from lockdowns.
• Cancel local authority debt held by the Public Works Loan Board, which will provide Councils with an extra £4.5 billion spending power a year, including £1.25 billion extra for Housing Revenue Accounts.
• Provide Councils with £10 billion grant a year to fund building 100,000 social rent Council homes annually, addressing the housing crisis and providing socially useful work.
• Open negotiations on ‘a new financial settlement for local government’ with funding based on measured social needs in each local authority, with an annual assessment to uprate for inflation.

Building resistance aimed at forcing the government into another U-turn is necessary to defend critical services and jobs. It is also the best means of creating conditions which improve our electoral chances by working together with those suffering the consequences of cuts.

(250 Words)