Transformative policy-making means listening to the ‘average’ person

Jeremy Corbyn has announced Labour’s plan to scrap the ill-fated Universal Credit. For people who have had the misfortune to get embroiled in the system, this is far more than just a welcome policy announcement. It’s a plan that has the potential to be materially, psychologically and socially transformative, and an example of transformative policy-making.

Since it was introduced five years ago, campaigners and Labour politicians have time and again spoken out about the adverse impact UC is having on people’s lives. On a local level, Labour-held councils like Oxford City Council set up support services specifically to help people who fell foul of the system when it was rolled out. (The National Audit Office said it has suffered from “weak management, ineffective control and poor governance”.) From long waits for payments to 1.9 million people being £1,000 per year worse off under UC, the system has been rightly lambasted.

UC has also contributed to increases in food bank usage. In April 2018, the Trussell Trust found that food banks in areas of full Universal Credit roll-out saw an increase of 52% in emergency food parcels provided 12 months after roll-out, compared to 13% in food banks in areas not in full roll-out. And in local areas without other means of support, residents are setting up food banks in their homes.

This is why I backed the Universal Credit and Employment Support motion as the Oxford West and Abingdon CLP delegate to Women’s Conference 2019. On the very first night of the conference, a room full of women trade unionists from Britain’s biggest unions and CLP delegates from across Britain thrashed out a composite motion that everyone was fully behind. Stories of the misery that UC and punitive employment-related sanctions have contributed to were movingly recalled. And the ongoing disproportionate impact on women, disabled people and ethnic minorities is clear: by 2021, black employed women are set to lose around £1,500 a year – the most of any group.

Women’s conference was transformative policy-making in action. But transformative policy-making isn’t just about improving lives or changing society and the way it’s organised; it is a means by which the average person (in this case, women) – whether an activist campaigner, community leader or otherwise – can have their voice heard on the issue that affects their lives and actually decide the aims, the vision and the words of their policy.

This year, The World Transformed – the festival that runs alongside Labour conference – ran a series of what were called ‘Policy Labs’. On topics ranging from education to health, participatory sessions open to anyone were held in rooms where a pen and paper and your own individual thoughts and experiences were all that was needed. Participants were asked to sit at a table, ready to be joined by others and then guided by a facilitator.

These sessions emphasised group discussion, encouraging attendees to jot down ideals and feed them back to the room. After several rounds of whittling down these ideals, a list of policies to be introduced in the first 100 days of the next Labour government was produced. This list would then be offered to opposition frontbenchers.

The demand for avenues in which the people most affected by regressive policies can influence new policies was evident: locally, there were several women candidates competing for selection as delegates, and the policy labs at TWT were filled to capacity. Equally clear was a high level of enthusiasm for discussion and an eagerness to listen to the experiences of others, and to use this in forming policy.

At both Women’s Conference and TWT, speaking, listening, mutual respect and an appreciation for differences of opinion within a collective was highlighted. And true to Labour’s socialist convictions, the collective vision came first. The labour movement showed that when people are empowered and given the chance to make decisions over their lives, the party and society stand to gain.