The Party have asked 10 questions, some of which seem very similar; I have not had time to decode many of them. I have submitted my answers which are based on the CLPD model answers but in some cases mine are shorter because argument is taken out and in some cases I have added new content. It's critical to ensure conference and the membership remain central to policy making and the manifesto. For more, use the 'read more' button ...
My guide, 16 tips, for delegates to Labour Conference, written, with help, for #lab19. See below/overleaf. …
Time for another go on getting some decent policy against the surveillance state and against privatised investigatory powers. Here’s my first draft.
Investigatory Powers to be subject to Human Rights Law
Conference notes that the Investigatory Powers Act 2016 legalised the UK intelligence services to collect telecommunication usage data on all UK residents, now ruled as contrary to human rights law.
Conference notes the Immigration Act 2014 and Counter-Terrorism and Security Act 2015 requires numerous private & public sector organisations to collect personal data about their customers, users or charges.
Conference notes that all immigration enforcement data has been exempted from the Data Protection Act 2018.
Conference notes that the Counter-Terrorism and Security Act 2015 places surveillance duties on specified authorities including educational & healthcare institutions.
Conference notes the complete absence from the NPF report 2018 on the surveillance society and the illegal investigatory powers regime introduced by the Tories in 2016.
Conference believes that freedom of expression & thought and the right to privacy are universal human rights and the current surveillance and investigatory powers regime is in breach of these rights.
Conference resolves that a Labour Government will ensure that private and public surveillance technologies and systems will conform to laws that meet the requirements of the European Convention on Human Rights, including a need to prove reasonable suspicion before collecting evidence.
Conference calls on the Labour Party to draw up a Human Rights based policy for the regulation of British Law Enforcement authorities and their investigatory powers. This to include the abolition of Prevent, the repeal of the 2014 Immigration Act and the placing of UK Borders under the auspices of the Data Protection Act.
I’d like to work something about “getitrightfromagenuinesite” in, since that’s allegedly voluntary and yet still surveillance and I should try and work something in on black listing and the public and private sector surveillance of Trade Unions, but the above …
In my article “Who’s missing?”, I looked at some of the facts about #lab18’s Card Vote 9, strangely the first vote taken. It would seem that there are 179,000 votes missing, although the number missing from Card Vote 10 was smaller at 143,000. The first expectation is that this comes from missing CLP’s but the CLPs that did not come, one would expect to be the smaller and poorer. If one assumes that the average size of the missing CLPs is 500 (the national mean average is ~850) , that would mean that between 286 & 358 CLPs are missing! That can’t be right!. Although another explanation is delegates that hadn’t picked up their voting books, or were away from the floor, which may explain the higher vote on Tuesday a.m. A third explanation might be abstention.
However I know that at least in one case the initial delegation size stated was ½ the accurate number, I wonder if this happened more than once and if when correcting the delegation size, they updated the master system on which the card vote value was held.
On of the principles of e-voting/e-counting is that the voter should be able to see (physically) what they’ve done. This cannot occur at Labour Party Conference as the voting slip has an identification code which is hopefully unique and the card vote value is assigned to it by the counting machine. Since the results are no longer published with line items, no-one knows if the card vote count is accurate. I think something should be done! …
All the documents are now on the Labour Party site, and I have mirrored them on my wiki. …
I was a delegate this year, and so attendance at even the official fringe meetings was not easy, the conference is a very full day. The one thing I have observed is that the reality is that “The World Transformed” creates an additional paywall on attending the fringe and this year they were poor at advertising their events, although I did not buy a ticket and so may not have been as well informed as I might. I am not sure this is truly the way to go, Conference is expensive enough as it is and you’ll know from much of my writing that charging for material which can be distributed for free is both morally & economically wrong, but also restricts the power of your message.
The fact is that TWT competes with the Labour Fringe, although it might be much cheaper to organise inside TWT if you get permission.
Others have made pointed comments about their views on the relevance of some sessions to a socialist party. …
Every reference back on the NPF report was carried although with the new majority on the NPF this may change but the key thing is that no notice is required! The platform and front bench can be taken by surprise. I see more restrictions on this being written into the new Conference Standing orders. …
In my last article I reported on the results of the 1st Card Vote and there’s some interesting insights to be learned.
Firstly the Affiliates and CLP votes are counted seperately, normalised as percentages and then added together, and expressed as a percentage. The Affiliates have 50% and CLPs have 50% of the final result.
1.84 million affiliate votes were cast, and ~385,000 CLP votes. That’s a lot of CLP votes missing. The card vote values should be based on membership (individual members in good standing) as at 31 December 2017, which was 564,000. (That seems a bit high based on press reporting, but the source is the Electoral Commission).
32% missing!
This means that ~32% of the membership were not represented. I was to hear later in he week that only 17 Scottish CLPs are in attendance. My CLP is fortunate in that it could fund a large delegation and considers that policy formulation is important but it’s clear that many CLPs either cannot afford to send a delegation and/or do not consider it important enough. In my evidence to the Democracy Review I argued that the cost of conference should be borne by the NEC, As Diana Holland, the Tresurer reported last year and was to report later; the Party is now debt free. …
Labour Conference approaches and I am keen to ensure that no-one shares my experiences in the Education Compositing Meeting in Liverpool 2016. I published my lessons in this blog post, “Compositing” and I and a friend have made a video capturing those lessons which we hope will be useful to attendees at #lab18.
I hope you find it useful. (The above video is the YouTube version.)
One point of clarification, I am advised that members of the Composite meeting can refuse to accept the composite and insist their words remain on the order paper.
ooOOOoo
SURL: https://wp.me/p9J8FV-1Ci …
You need to be in the conference room for the debates (and votes). It runs from Sunday through to Wednesday lunch and ends with the Leader’s speech. It is likely that Woman’s Conference will be on the preceding Saturday. The most important task is to represent your members by voting on motions, rule changes, reports from the NEC, Officers and the National Policy Forum and in elections because some elections are still conducted at conference. Since a delegation is responsible for representing the organisation that sent it, it is expected that the delegation should vote together …