The following motions are suggested for submission to Annual Women’s Conference 2022. The deadline for submission is 12 noon on 11 Februrary and motions must be 250 words or fewer.

Defending the NHS is a priority for women

Conference notes:

1. With distress the comments of the Shadow Health Secretary, in January 2022, that Labour would use private providers if in government at Westminster
2. The future of the NHS is crucial for everyone but particularly for women – for example 77% of NHS staff and the majority of outpatient appointments are for women.
3. The future of the NHS is under threat from private providers, aided by their representatives in Westminster, who have systematically underfunded and undermined the NHS.

Conference believes

1. Streeting’s comments were not only in contradiction of Labour Party Policy to bring about universal, comprehensive, publicly provided and closely co-ordinated NHS and Social Care services, but are also wrong both in principle and in practice – expensive and unnecessary, unable to deliver the claimed benefits and only serving to undermine the NHS further.
2. Labour, as NHS founders, should be its primary defender.
3. Current reforms strengthen the role of private companies, with more private contracts, more down-skilling and outsourcing of NHS jobs, reduced services and significant spending cuts.
4. Awareness of the severe threat faced by the NHS through under-funding and privatisation, which will particularly impact on women, BAME communities, low income and disabled people, is too low, and Labour is not doing enough to bring the threat to public attention.

This conference calls on the Women’s Committee to work with MPs and trade unions to launch a major campaign to defend the NHS; and for Labour to unambiguously reject NHS privatisation.

247 words

Women and the pandemic

Conference notes:

1. Tory handling of the pandemic has led to unacceptably high death tolls, long-term health problems and increased inequality.
2. Women, particularly low income, single parent, disabled, young and BAME women, have been most impacted with less access to financial support and more likely to work in sectors hardest hit.
3. Tory focus on vaccination-only is wrong. Vaccination is vital but lack of systemic solutions and public health protections leads to dangerously high infection levels and puts the NHS under severe stress. It has led to new variants and prolongs the issues caused by the pandemic.
4. Tories have failed to address vaccine inequality: by April 2021, wealthy countries had 80% of the world’s vaccines, with just 0.3% going to low-income countries. COVAX has often been used to protect corporate patents and profits.
5. Labour has too often supported the government, failing to adequately hold them to account and provide an alternative framework that prioritises people not profit.

Conference believes Labour should promote a comprehensive elimination strategy that protects health including:

1. Covid-safe schools, including HEPA filters and CO2 monitors in every classroom.
2. Similarly Covid-safe public transport and other indoor workplaces.
3. A fully-funded, locally accountable Find, Test, Trace, Isolate, Support programme.
4. Increased Statutory Sick Pay to allow workers to isolate.
5. Patent waivers and supported vaccine access for low-income countries.

Conference calls on Labour, including our Women’s Committee, to promote these measures, and more regular use of impact assessments, in the interests of women.

249 words

Women refugees

Conference notes:

1. the majority of women in UK detention centres are survivors of serious human rights abuses
2. the recent home office decision to send female asylum seekers to a remote detention centre in County Durham
3. that pregnant refugees are not being examined by doctors or midwives on arrival
4. that asylum seekers have no right to work, with a weekly allowance of £39.63 plus £3 for a pregnant woman, £3.50 for a child
5. That 27 refugees drowned in the English Channel, including seven women, one pregnant, plus three children

Conference believes that the Nationality and Borders Bill will worsen the situation, noting:

1. asylum seekers’ rights in the UK may be denied due to their method of arrival
2. two in three women previously accepted as refugees could now be turned away
3. The UNHCR believes the Nationality and Borders Bill would penalise most refugees seeking asylum in the UK and undermines the 1951 Refugee convention

Conference calls on the Labour, including its Women’s Committee, to campaign

1. against the Nationality and Borders Bill and if necessary for Labour in Government to repeal it
2. to end poverty and destitution of refugee women through a right to work or allowances in line with Universal Credit
3. for free access to NHS healthcare on the basis of need
4. for gender issues to be considered strategically throughout the asylum process; for safeguarding measures for survivors of rape or sexual violence; and for adequate, easily available legal aid.

250 words

Women’s health – access to abortion

Conference notes

1. ‘Telemedicine’, which allows the two medical abortion pills to be taken at home following a video or telephone consultation, enacted during the pandemic, has enabled earlier abortions at home, making them safer and more effective – wait times have halved and major medical complications have dropped by two thirds.
2. There is strong evidence that as well as medical abortions being extremely safe, that they break down so many barriers for women requesting abortions including:

• The inadequacy of expensive and sparse public transport in rural communities.
• The need to take time off work, which has the biggest impact on those in insecure work.
• The need to sort out childcare, which can be difficult and expensive (more than 50% of those having abortions already have children).
• The stigma attached to abortion.

Conference believes:

1. The swift relaxation of the rules about home use in March 2020 highlights what is possible.
2. Good quality telemedicine and pills by post (or self-managed abortion) should be made permanent as a cost effective measure that allows women much more control over their lives.

Conference calls on the Shadow Health Team to make the evidence-based case and put pressure on the Westminster government to make the current measures available permanently; and on the Women’s Committee to publicise and publicly support Abortion Rights’ campaign for these measures and encourage CLPs to do the same (taking into account different situations within the nations of the UK).

240 words

Support women in education

Conference notes

1. The education sector – including early years, schools, further and higher education – has been particularly hard hit by the pandemic, impacting huge numbers of women workers, often in the lowest paid roles.
2. That despite the huge burden borne by women workers in education, pay has stagnated – and is going down in real times in the context of a cost of living crisis – and in many areas there is a recruitment and retention crisis – for example, a third of beginner teachers leave in the first five years in the profession.
3. Women have been impacted by the UK having one of the lowest rates of Statutory Sick Pay in Europe – for example twenty of the biggest school catering companies are not giving full sick pay to staff, meaning that some of the lowest-paid, primarily women, school staff working for the minimum wage cannot afford to self-isolate because they’re being forced to rely on statutory sick pay (SSP).
4. The University and College Union (UCU) is taking industrial action to defend pensions and take action on pay, equalities, casualisation and workload, which have a particular impact on women Since 2009, pay has been effectively cut by nearly 20% in real terms, women and black and minority ethnic staff experience significant pay discrimination – a gender pay gap of 15.1%.

Conference support the trade unions taking action to address the crisis in education and calls on the Women’s Committee to highlight the potential impact on women of relevant campaigns and actions.

250 words

Women and the criminal justice system

Conference notes that the UK government has overturned the commitment to reduce numbers of  women in jail. There are twice as many women in prison as 30 years ago. Prison is most appropriate for dangerous and violent crimes and the vast majority of those are committed by men.

Women are failed particularly badly by the current system.

Conference believes that not every female criminal is a victim, but coercive relationships often draw women into crime; half of women in prison have committed an offence in support of someone else’s drug habit. Equal treatment to men is inappropriate and ignores deep-seated structural disadvantage.

This Conference calls upon Labour shadow cabinet to renew our policy position urgently, including:

• A commitment to phase out women’s prisons for all but the most dangerous offenders.
• Ensuring that the majority of female offenders are diverted to probationary support in the community (Corston Review recommendation) with investment in alternatives to prison including women’s centres.
• Supporting fundamental change for pregnant women in the criminal justice system, following the inquiry into the experience of an 18 year old woman and the tragic, avoidable, death of her baby at HMP Bronzefield Ashford in 2021
• For all policy relating to women, justice, imprisonment, substance abuse recovery, mental and broader health support to take full account of the needs of children, and women as their mothers and predominant carers.

227 words

For a properly funded social care service

Conference notes

1. The Tory government’s long-awaited White Paper published just before Christmas is completely inadequate to address the crisis in social care in England.
2. That this crisis particularly impacts women who make up the majority of the workforce in the social care sector as well as having the vast majority of unpaid caring responsibilities.

Conference believes

1. The proposed funding via the levy neither raises sufficient revenue to address the crisis in social care, nor does it raise this money in a fair way and the proposed reforms still leave many with unmet care needs.
2. The plan fails to address the need to improve pay to social care workers, expand the workforce, and improve access to services and levels of services for the 1.5 million older people and many more working-age adults currently with unmet care needs.

Conference calls on Labour to be much stronger in holding the Tories in Westminster to account on their completely inadequate and unfair proposals on social care.

Conference supports a high quality, fully funded, universal care service, free at the point of use, with a well-paid, unionised work force.

In particular Conference calls on Labour, including our Women’s Committee, to prioritise campaigning for increased funding for local authorities for social care and better pay, conditions and training for those working in social care.

222 words

Women and Climate Change (circulated by Labour CND)

Labour Women’s Conference recognises that:

1. women globally suffer the most from climate change impacts, partly due the nature of their work and role as primary carers;
2. the Covid, cost of living and related energy crisis will exacerbate economic insecurity for women.

Conference applauds:

1.  young women leading on the fight against climate change such as Greta Thunberg in Sweden and Ugandan activist Vanessa Nakate;
2.  environmental defenders in their communities like Rosamund Adoo-Kissi-Debrah, the mother of Ella, where air pollution was found to be a cause in her tragically early death.

Conference remembers and stands with those on the frontline of climate change victim to severe human rights abuse such as Berta Carceres in Honduras.

Conference calls on the Labour Party to ensure that the gender impacts of the climate and ecological crises are central in policy making, including the intersections with race, class and disability. Specifically, to:

1.  Advance a feminist response to the climate and ecological crisis which prioritises women’s voice;
2.  Recognise that the transition to a zero-carbon economy requires an economy wide approach and transformations across all sectors;
3.  Advocate for the health and social care sectors as important ‘climate’ jobs, including unpaid care work;
4.  Rebuild public services and reverse privatisation of energy to ensure energy is provided as an essential public good under public ownership;
5.  Campaign for a publicly owned sustainable and extended national network of affordable rail and public transport;
6.  Advocate for a gender transformative justice transition.

248 words