Making policies to win

By James Valentine

Labour Party policy emanates from the membership and for the last thirteen years the National Policy Forum has been the way in which this has taken place. It largely replaced the previous system based around formal resolutions which were then supposed to be resolved at conference.

The NPF is composed of around 200 members from the shadow cabinet, MPs, MEPs, socialist societies, trade unions and the constituencies. It works in a deliberative manner and is based on locally-based policy forums held in party units or the community.

The 2009 conference agreed a rule change for selecting constituency NPF delegates who were previously elected as part of conference proceedings. The Grass Roots Alliance pushed for an OMOV vote, believing that once individual members could express their preferences, the left would sweep in. Actually, this hasn’t happened. I and several other independent candidates who had been elected under the old system were re-elected this year by popular vote. We all had to work harder to get elected, but that’s not a not a bad thing, and although the reasoning behind the rule change was possibly flawed, it was a good development.

But aside from these issues, there have been more fundamental criticisms of the NPF. The process itself sometimes leaves members feeling dissatisfied or manipulated. The most frequent charge I heard at conference was from members who hold policy forums and send in reports but then don’t receive any feedback.

And where the NPF has been successful, it hasn’t promulgating its achievements well enough. The idea for NHS Direct, for example originally came from a local forum. A whole raft of ideas from votes at 16, to the workplace smoking ban, to House of Lords reform, have all been developed via the NPF.

The trade unions also have complaints, but from a different angle. The unions, unlike the constituency delegates, are able to employ officials who develop policy positions and put in amendments. They have tended to see the process as being like an industrial negotiation – meeting to agree a position and forcing it through at the end of the two-year policy cycle. But this has sometimes led to the constituency delegates being left out, and the leadership feeling railroaded.

Labour in government tended to manipulate the process, and the party’s previous General Secretary hinted in his recent book that he attempted to influence some of the votes. Only the other day, Peter revealed some quite negative views about the Labour membership which, one always suspected, coloured his view of the NPF.

Clearly it’s crucial that Labour in opposition gets this right. The Party has recognised some dissatisfaction with the current process and launched a review. Labour Party members can download its consultation document here.

New media could have a role, and I raised this at LabourList’s excellent conference fringe. Ideas which came forward included using Twitter as a more user-friendly way of getting back reactions to policy positions. There were also some tips from the David Miliband campaign, which used volunteers to ensure that every question about policy received a personal follow-up – surely something that we could learn from.

A surprising number of members that I’ve spoken to say that the NPF should be abolished, and I think this an emotional reaction to the feeling that they’re being ignored. But we shouldn’t throw out the baby with the bathwater. Participative policy is better policy. The Tories don’t consult anyone very much and however good their spinning, it’s their daft policies on important matters like schools and health that are already unravelling and which will be their undoing.

It’s notable that Ed Miliband’s approach to the process has been positive. Before writing the election manifesto he took time to consult representatives from all the regions at a special meeting in which I participated. Although not agreeing with everything that we said, he took our comments on board. But as important as it is to have the top man on side, something more is needed – the party hierarchy as a whole needs to let go a little, finally ditch the control-freakery, and start to trust the membership.