The Labour Party are running a ‘final’ policy consultation. Only CLPs can contribute now and it has a portal home page at the NPF site. I am reading through the commission documents and comment on some below/overleaf …
I am reading through the commission documents and started with the “Green & Digital Future” commission’s statement. This cross references Labour’s Industrial Policy, who knew they had one and the also its green paper, “A new deal for working people”, which is very good except for its virtue signalling on the minimum wage and lack of ambition on sick pay. The Industrial Strategy document proposes the resurrection of NEDC and the promotion of public/private partnerships. The former might be quite useful; the latter classic social democracy. I find it odd that the one expenditure promise made at #lab22 is missing from this document, i.e. a National Investment Bank and a £28bn growth fund.
It also references a “Green and digital future“, an 2022 statement from the Labour Party which covers, Industrial Strategy, Energy, Digital, Royal Mail, and Transport.
On digital, I gave them 70%. Broadband rollout, to overcome the rural/urban divide, but the promise of free to the home has gone. What they say about skills and growth is just noise! What they say about musicians and reward suggests that they continue to be captured and will move intellectual property protection towards authorship and not innovative derived works. We should note that strong intellectual property laws help big companies, lawyers and not struggling musicians.
We want to keep people safe, protect their money from scams and online fraud, secure our democracy, and ensure everyone is treated with decency and respect
Not much to complain of here, but I think we should be more explicit about fake news and foreign actors. In terms of protecting people’s data & money, we need to bite the bullet of the UK’s double-headed cyber defences of GCHQ and NCSC (National Cyber-Security Centre). We need strong regulation of crypto currencies, and review the enforcement of Section 3 of the GDPR to ensure its effective.
There is an interesting silence on the funding and regulation of the BBC. Its charter of independence needs to be strengthened and it in my mind needs to be mandated to make its content, where available for free to British licence fee payers (and historic payers.)