#JC9 CLP reps make inaugural collective-transparency NEC meeting report

Labour’s nine ‘CLP’ (constituency Labour party) representatives on the party’s NEC (National Executive Committee) have made their inaugural joint report on NEC meetings, as part of a collective commitment to transparency.

The report, as posted to Facebook by NEC member Huda Elmi just minutes ago, reads as follows:

CLP reps’ report for the first meeting of the new NEC held at Party Conference 25/9/18
A collective report by: Yasmine Dar, Huda Elmi, Rachel Garnham, Ann Henderson, Jon Lansman, Navendu Mishra, Claudia Webbe, Darren Williams and Peter Willsman.

The newly-elected Labour National Executive Committee (NEC) met for the first time at the end of the last full day of the party conference in Liverpool on Tuesday 25 September. The nine CLP representatives directly elected by party members, have a:creed to produce joint reports of our meetings as soon as possible after they have
taken place.

We are all grateful for the trust placed in us by members in the recent election. We now have a clear mandate to support the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn and to contribute towards the democratic renewal of our party and to preparing labour to win the next election with the kind of bold, radical policies that proved so popular in June 2017. We look forward to undertaking that work over the months ahead.

Tuesday’s meeting began with the Chair Andy Kerr. welcoming the three of us who have been newly-elected – Huda Elmi, Ann Henderson and Navendu Mishra – and the two new trade, union reps, Jane Taylor of Unite and Michael Wheeler of Usdaw.

Jeremy then thanked everyone – including party staff and conference centre staff – who had contributed to the success of what has been the biggest Labour conference yet, with 1,680 delegates, 200 of whom had spoken at the rostrum. He spoke briefly about some of the events he had attended over the last few days, outside as well as inside conference, including visits to local community projects in Liverpool and to Anfield to thank Liverpool supporters for their work collecting money for food banks and to commemorate those who died in the Hillsborough tragedy.

Jeremy highlighted some of the major policy announcements that we had heard at
conference, including:

Rebecca Long-Bailey’s commitment that a Labour government wouId ensure zero net
carbon emissions by 2050. He said that we had changed the public discourse, now we needed to mobilise our mass membership to take the fight to the Tories.

Tom Watson added his own praise for Jennie Formby and party staff for the successful organisation of conference. He talked about his own itinerary over the previous few days and commented that the party had emerged from conference with a united position on Brexit – unlike the Tories.

Jennie thanked her own staff for their hard work and the long hours they had put in to make conference a success.

We then considered a paper on the election of fourteen additional members to the National Constitutional Committee (NCC) – the body that deals with the cases of members referred to it over disciplinary matters. The expansion of the NCC was agreed by conference via a rule change on Sunday but the NEC had felt that it would be too much of a rush to fill the extra seats through the usual vote by delegates at conference – which is how the NCC is normally elected – and decided instead that conference delegates shouId be balloted as soon as possible after the close of conference.

The paper set out a timetable whereby nominations would be open from 1 to 28 October and the ballot would itself take place between 12 and 25 November. For the six CLP seats, the paper proposed that candidates must be nominated by ten CLPs including their own but Rachel successfully proposed that this be reduced to five, including the nominee’s own CLP. CLP secretaries will be receiving details shortly, With this one amendment the paper was agreed.

Jeremy proposed a vote of thanks to Andy Kerr the, outgoing Chair of the NEC, who had brought his considerable experience in the CWU and its predecessor unions to bear in dealing with some challenging business over the previous year.

The four departing Committee members – Ann Black, Eddie lzzard, Paddy Lillis
and Rhea Wolfson – were then presented with a certificate of thanks for their contribution to the NEC.

Our final business was to elect the Chair and Vice-Chair for the next year and two very experienced female trade unionists were chosen:· respectively, Wendy Nicholls of Unison and Andi Fox of the TSSA.

The next NEC meetings will be on 20 November, when the three main sub-committees, (Equalities, Disputes and Organisation) will get together; and 27 November, which will be an ‘away-day’, focused on planning the Committee’s work over the next year.

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