By Alex Smith / @alexsmith1982
I know this has been a long time in coming, for which I apologise, but I wanted to let readers know about the progress being made on submitting the New Ideas for a Renewed Movement series to the Party.
Over the summer, LabourList invited readers to submit policy proposals for the next Labour manifesto. In September, the 25 most repeated of those suggestions were each given the space to be advocated for and promoted on LabourList. At the end of the month, throughout Labour Party conference, readers voted on their preferred three policy pitches.
981 votes were cast and the top 25, in their order of preference among readers, were as follows:
1 – Increase the basic rate of income tax threshold to £10,000.
2 – Increase the National Minimum Wage to a National Living Wage.
3 – Commit to building a national high-speed rail network.
4 – A fully elected House of Lords.
5 - Clamp down on tax evasion through tax havens.
6 - Free minimum standard of long term care for all older people.
7 - Re-nationalise the railways.
8 - Create universal childcare.
9 - A full wide ranging housing plan to include demolition and filling of derelict homes.
10 - Remove charitable status for public schools.
11 - Both parents should have the option of taking shared amounts of maternity and paternity leave.
12 - Introduce free prescriptions on the NHS.
13 - Build a youth club in every ward.
14 - End hospital car parking charges in England.
15 - Lower the voting age to 16.
16 - Link a commitment to curbing domestic flights by 2025 to further electrification of the railways.
17 - Create a national standards agency to regulate private housing standards.
18 - A public share in the private profits of local green energy generation.
19 - Liberalise the Sunday trading law to allow weekday opening hours on Sundays.
20 - Use public buildings, such as schools, for community and social events.
21 - Make advertising of Junk Food to children illegal.
22 - Improve access to parenting classes and offer them free to those on low incomes.
23 - Introduce post graduate student loans.
24 - Investment in off-site and outdoor education programmes for children.
25 - The National Curriculum should include credit management and personal finance education.
Pleasingly, Labour have already signalled that some of these proposals are likely to be adopted: phasing out hospital car parking charges in England; the National Care Service; and the expansion of childcare. A national high-speed rail service is also on the cards. Over the coming months, we will revisit these results to try and ensure that those policies are followed through in the manifesto or the last session of this Parliament.
In the meantime, I have now sent the following letter to Ed Miliband, who is co-ordinating the manifesto for the general election:
November 22nd, 2009
Dear Ed,
This summer, readers of LabourList submitted hundreds of policy proposals to our New Ideas for a Renewed Movement series, which you opened with your article dated July 31st.
As you know, new policies were initially pitched in comments and articles on our website, in Tweets, on Facebook and by email.
The most repeated of these policy proposals were given full advocacy space in which experts and those who initially suggested them made supporting arguments for their adoption by the Labour party in the manifesto.
After the period of discussion, LabourList readers voted for their favourite three policies between Friday 25th September and Friday 9th October.
I’ve now had the chance to collate those results, and the most popular five policies, as voted for by 981 readers, were:
1 – Increase the basic rate of income tax threshold to £10,000.
2 – Increase the National Minimum Wage to a National Living Wage.
3 – Commit to building a national high-speed rail network.
4 – A fully elected House of Lords.
5 - Clamp down on tax evasion through tax havens.
I believe these policies represent some of the best and most relevant aspects of British social democratic thinking today. Together, they demonstrate our need to develop policy that advances genuine democratic reform, fairer distribution of national income at a time of hardship for many and a renewed focus on providing the modern public services that will be so crucial for further economic recovery and future growth.
Some of these policies have already been discussed and some were at least partially announced by the Prime Minister in his speech to party conference on September 29th. I hope those commitments will make up a core part of the final manifesto.
However, the commitment to increase the basic rate of income tax to £10,000 has so far only been proposed by the Liberal Democrats. If we in the Labour Party are to reconnect with the electorate we must surely commit to lifting those on the lowest incomes out of taxation as a matter both of principal and sound economics.
At this challenging time for our party, it is imperative that Labour listens to its supporters’ concerns and desires and to those of the general public. I hope that you will consider the above 5 policies – properly costed and developed – for the full manifesto for the 2010 general election, on which you are currently consulting.
Thank you and I look forward to your response,
Alex Smith
Editor, LabourList.org
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This is seriously wrong and will massively impact people. Anyone got the time for an article?
Point 2 - what is the level you wish to set? average salary is 25k P.A, so if you want this as the minimum, the millions above this level will want thier salaries increased to represent length of service, position etc. This is a recipe for Inflation to wreck the UK, only a Financially illiterate Socialist would vote for this. What a joke
Point 3 - We have far more urgent areas of Policy to deal with, and spending Billions for something that will not be able to be used for 20 years is not such a priority.
Point 4 - if the Lords is 100% Elected it will have a mandate to challenge the other House on everything. Its meant to be a revising chamber not anothe rbarrier to smooth Goverment.
Point 5 - Nu Labour have had 12 years to deal with this and its just a fop aimed at its own supporters pretending it will deal with this problem now, when they truthfully know the ycannot do anything about it in reality.
My partner is disabled and if ever the ministers new how the systems works they would be ashamed , It can upto a year appealling the process and inbetween you have to live on reduced benifits , This can cause more hardship and the new welfare reforms , There so good the torys like them .
ricki
I am stunned at your account of being worse off under Labour and I wonder what has gone wrong to have enabled that to arise? Clearly, that is not what the Labour Party should be about - those that are vulnerable should be afforded the support that they need.
It is a crime that the truely sick and disabled should live in poverty and I am sorry to hear of your anxiety at losing your benefit upon retirement age.
Can you not claim attendance allowance to replace your DLA?
I agree that hosptial car park charges are a total scandal.
Before we change the Lords the house of commons needs reform , I caught some of the daily politics and some proposels seemed fair to me , Until we strengthen parliment it does not matter who is in power .
ricki
I look forward to seeing ours and the Tories proposals for its replacement
Cases like Robert's should be it the top 5 and how we can help as a society and if it needs more tax, so be it.
On the whole I agree with most of this except that again unemployed and the sick the disabled and the poorest seem to be left on the shelf.
The fact is I'm classed as being Paraplegic, my bowel and bladder have failed, I have serious problems walking I have to use crutches and braces on my legs or my wheelchaire when it's repaired, I have problems with hand control, so basically when i had my PCA test, 15 points show your seriously disabled, I had 188 points.
Yet sadly to say i was better off under a Tory government then I've been under a labour government And as I come up to retirement now i will also lose my DLA, disability living allowance because labour wants to take that off me to pay for the care of the old, actually making us poor again.
labour put in place prescription charges and car park charges at hospital, labour removed from benefits increases council tax.
It annoys me we even call this party labour.
So ok this will help form a newer labour party, sadly it's not helping the poorest within society much is it.
On 1-5 it makes me proud ;)
We could solve a lot of social problems if we do it properly.
But how are you going to pay for it? And how are you going to staff it? Your party's repressive over-regulation has already stifled the flow of those willing to volunteer to work with young people. So these people are going to have to be highly-paid professionals, if you can find them at all. Do you have a plan? Or is this nice idea just more empty rhetoric?
You make a very interesting point here. You are right to say that protecting children has indeed stifled the voluntary sector. I remember when I started university last year, I wanted to coach a local football team at the weekend, and to do that I needed to go through rigorous checks which I never got round to completing because just completing the forms was enough to put me off.
We can debate the pros and cons of legislation to protect children, but personally I think its a necessary evil. If I were in charge of Youth Centres, I would employ a manager full time, and allow them to run it as though it were a business, albeit a heavily subsidised one. Amongst other things, the money generated from selling drinks and food in the Centre would contribute towards the overall running costs, and I'm sure, especially in times of recession, there would be young people willing to work there. Job creation is no bad thing.
I don't want to delve too deeply into my own personal vision for a particular Youth Centre in my town, but having an under 18s nightclub within the Youth Centre - based on a Student's Union - would allow the manager to look into local businessmen putting on nights there and splitting the profits with the Youth Centre. For example, there is a night in Birmingham called Propaganda at the O2 academy. The O2 academy take all the money from drink sales, whilst the organisers of the night responsible for promoting Propaganda take the door fee.
This would rely on the Centre being successful, but there are possibilities of encouraging local businesses to get involved if we were to do it properly.
I note what you say about "necessary evil", but maintain that the barriers to volunteering are simply going to have to be lowered (and a certain amount of risk accepted as a trade-off) before both this idea and a whole lot of other desirable social ends can be brought about in practice. I am afraid that this kind of rational cost-benefit calculation is not in New Labour's "ban everything" nature.