This will be a quick round-up of what was promised, pledged or otherwise presented during the Labour conference, interspersed with my opinions on the pledges and my predictions about them, should I have any. I intend to do this exact thing for each of the conferences that have taken place recently, I’m merely starting with Labour here. Alongside these I intend to do much the same as each party releases their new manifesto moving towards the next general election.
Rwanda deportation scheme
Labour have pledged to scrap this highly controversial scheme, they continued that they would still do so “even if it works”. By all accounts a good sign, quite an unpopular scheme publicly, so I’m sure this pledge will go down well. Something to consider with this though, is that a lot of this is already in motion, it could be a situation where stopping this scheme may take longer than initially assumed.
£1.1bn NHS evening & weekend overtime plan
Now, the proposition here is to provide a further £1.1bn to the NHS to allow for further evening and weekend overtime shifts, with a view of reducing the currently sky-high waiting list. Frankly I don’t see this making much of a dent. There are already severe staff shortages across the NHS, asking what little staff are still there to double down on overtime is likely to cause more issues – remains to be seen how effective this plan will be, if at all.
Workplace Reforms
The main proposals here are a ban on zero-hour contracts, fire & rehire tactics and a fairly vague promise of “bolstering basic workers rights”. Banning zero-hour contracts and fire and rehire seems like an absolute win as far as I’m concerned, should have been done long ago but better late than never. As for the other vague promise I’m entirely unsure. They have also pledged to provide a boost to collective bargaining and work closely with unions moving forward.
Alongside the above they have pledged to close the gender pay gap, make work more family-friendly and tackle sexual harassment in the workplace. I’m not entirely sure what they’re going for with ‘family friendly’ but the other two pledges I can absolutely get behind. It’s also worth noting that Labour have committed to having all of these workplace reforms in place within 100 days of being in office.
Housing ownership and development reform
Labour have pledged to provide what they are calling “the biggest boost in affordable and social housing for a generation” as well as a proposing house planning system reforms, strengthening the rights of renters and abolishing both leasehold land tenure and ‘no fault’ evictions. Continuing they have proposed giving first chance preference to first time buyers on new developments in their communities as well as a comprehensive mortgage guarantee scheme. Details are a little light on a lot of this, “the biggest boost” is a fine enough sound bite, but there is very little meat on these particular bones right now. The rest looks good assuming it is actually put into place, a lot of these proposals are strong socialist policies which I’m happily surprised to see.
Miscellaneous pledges/proposals
Rounding these off then, they have pledged to slash government spending on consultants, something that has risen sharply the last 10 years. As well as a pledge to more robustly enforce the ministerial code on the use of private jets, a clear shot at Rishi Sunak who has been criticised a lot recently over his continued use of private jets. Something I am quite interested in, is a pledge to create a ‘covid corruption commissioner’ to help recoup about £2.6bn of taxpayers’ money that has been lost to corruption, mismanagement or otherwise. This will no doubt be an absolute win with voters as the overwhelming majority are in favour of clawing that money back, understandably. Finally, there were propositions to place a fiscal lock on ministerial spending, in essence stopping it from rising further, and also to speed up the planning system for major infrastructure projects, think transport, energy etc. Labour has also recently pledged to bring rail back into public ownership as well as “hand local councils control over bus services” though it remains to be seen how that will look.
My thoughts
Whilst it does seem like there is a considerable amount to work with here, it is always worth mentioning that a considerable amount of this may never see the light of day under a Labour government. Healthy scepticism aside, though, there is a decent mix of policies here that I think will be a good foundation to build upon with the release of a new manifesto moving towards the next general election. Should Labour win in the next election, as is currently being widely assumed, I will be keeping an eye out to see if the policies that were promised here within 100 days, will actually be delivered.
On top of the above, as somebody from Wales myself, the considerable lack of Welsh specific information of propositions was resounding. I’m aware that Welsh Labour conferences separately, but for many it’s clear that Starmer is just as much the head of Welsh Labour as he is the English branch and to have him not mention Wales even a single time could well be taken as a slight by many in Wales, perhaps rightfully so.