NEC member reveals Labour’s rigging to avoid conference NHS renationalisation vote

Ann Black’s report exposes right-wing gerrymandering

Last month, Skwawkbox revealed Labour’s manoeuvres to block a Socialist Health Association (SHA) motion requiring the full renationalisation of the NHS and the banning of the party accepting donations from private health interests. Both Keir Starmer and his health spokesman Wes Streeting have accepted large donations from private health investors.

After an uproar over the revelations, the motion was eventually reinstated – but Labour then partitioned the SHA motion into a section where it would be kept away from proper debate, while ushering through a vague and meaningless alternative motion for form’s sake.

But Labour national executive (NEC) member Ann Black has let the cat out of the bag in her report on Labour’s post conference NEC meeting – confirming Labour’s rigging to prevent members and unions having a democratic say on Labour’s NHS policy:

One member asked about rumours that the NEC officers had over-ruled the conference arrangements committee (CAC) with respect to certain motions.  They argued that this was unprecedented and undermined the CAC’s impartiality.  The general secretary explained that the NEC had a duty to intervene when the letter or the spirit of the rules were in jeopardy.

As it happens, my CLP Oxford East submitted one of the NHS motions, based on the Socialist Health Association model.  Initially the CAC ruled it out on the grounds that it concerned an organisational matter, which I took as relating to the underlined sentence:

The next Labour government will ban political donations from private healthcare corporations, their lobbyists, or those invested in private healthcare corporations. Labour and Labour MPs will not accept such donations.

It is true that the NEC’s business board decides on whether donations are acceptable, but at the 2022 conference a motion was accepted and carried which included this:

“Conference resolves Labour must … not accept donations from companies interested in outsourcing NHS functions”

Oxford East therefore appealed on the grounds of consistency.  I expected to lose and was pleasantly surprised when our motion was accepted.  However, I then discovered that motions on the NHS were split into two separate categories for the priorities ballot which decides topics for debate  Five near-identical motions were classified as An NHS Fit for the Future, and another 14 were lumped together under Health Services and Funding, including ours, and also this from Redditch which doesn’t mention money at all:

Conference is concerned at the withdrawal of local health services and lack of provision, and wish to introduce accountable elected local people with voting rights in the NHS Trust and ICB’s in order to stand up for the wishes of local people.

and this from Harborough, Oadby & Wigton which has no relation to the SHA model either:

The NHS is at the heart of this party and our country. The Labour Party will invest in the future of our NHS, but should extend this to ensuring NHS staff are given a fair deal at work. The parking charges should be exempt for all NHS staff.

It seems that initially the CAC allocated all motions on the NHS to a single category.  The first five CLPs then argued that they wanted their own grouping, which indicates that they not only knew about their own motion but about the others as well, information not publicly available.

Indeed I didn’t know that CLPs could appeal against classification as well as rejection.  As I understand it the NEC supported them and over-ruled the CAC.  There was a separate issue around whether a motion on public ownership should have been moved to the energy grouping, but I know less about that.

Despite assurances that the NEC officers had made a limited one-off intervention, this did seem to enter new territory.  Formerly all motions on a subject area would be placed in a single group and, if there were different views, two or more composites could emerge.  The leadership would argue against those they did not agree with, and ignore them if conference voted for them anyway. I would not want a situation where motions are grouped into, for instance, Education (helpful) and Education (unhelpful and everything else).  New Labour never went that far, and even on Iraq different views could be, and were, debated.

Black was absolutely right that the regime will simply ignore any motions it does not like. Last week, while the conference was still going on and had voted overwhelmingly for the renationalisation of the energy sector – a Starmer promise when he campaigned to become party leader then promptly dumped – front-bencher Jonathan Reynolds told the BBC flatly:

We’re not going to nationalise the energy system.

Democracy in Starmer’s shell of a party is a sham – before and after any votes by members and unions in the conference that is, according to Labour’s rules, sovereign above all, including the party leader.

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