Labour conference is set for a tussle over the two-child benefit cap after the party attempted to block a motion to abolish it.
The Andy Burnham-backed group Mainstream has pushed to have the cap debated on the conference floor in Liverpool next week. On Friday the move was blocked by the leadership’s Conference Arrangements Committee (CAC). Now after an appeal by Mainstream and its co-organisers, Open Labour and Momentum, there is a chance the debate will still happen.
Mainstream’s national coordinator Luke Hurst said the party had “seen sense” by allowing the possibility of a debate on the subject.
But he told the New Statesman that the initial decision was “a senseless act, indicative of the hyperfactional, top-down culture becoming entrenched within the Labour Party that is undermining the party’s offer to the country by stifling meaningful engagement with policy and ideas.”
As if it needed saying again, the Labour Party is not a happy place just a year on from that landslide election victory.
Two reasons were provided by the CAC for the obstruction. First, that the motion covered more than one subject – because it raised a gambling levy or a banking levy as ways to fund the lifting of the cap, meaning the proposition was technically a bunch of policy questions rolled into one.
Second, that the issue had been addressed in the annual National Policy Forum (NPF) report. That report, published in August, noted the forthcoming publication of the Child Poverty Strategy this autumn.
But insiders suspect the real reason is this: the leadership does not want a forthcoming autumn U-turn on the cap to look like it was forced by a Burnham-backed member vote.
To recap, the report of the government’s Child Poverty Taskforce is due to be published within the next few months. It is widely expected to recommend a significant change to the cap. That recommendation is then likely to be implemented at the Budget in late November.
Bridget Phillipson has now described the cap as “spiteful” and pledged herself against it as part of the deputy leadership contest. This is a significant intervention: not because she is running to be deputy leader, but because she is the actual Education Secretary and therefore a co-chair of the taskforce.
Mainstream, along with Open Labour and Momentum, has spent the past month trying to organise this conference vote by encouraging CLPs to vote it through and demonstrate widespread backing by members.
They appealed the original block and on Monday were told by the CAC that the question will be put to a priorities ballot of delegates on Sunday, the first full day of conference. If the motion passes that hurdle, the question can be debated on the floor.
It probably won’t be the last clash between Mainstream and the powers that be in Labour.
Working with Survation, the group has conducted some thorough opinion polling of Labour Party members to work out the issues they care about which are not being addressed by the current leadership. Along with overwhelming opposition to the two-child cap, they have found that 92 per cent of members want nationalised utilities, 91 per cent support of wealth taxes, etc.
More excitable commentators might draw a comparison to Morgan McSweeney’s Labour Together, the last leadership-critical group in the party that extensively polled member opinion.
[Further reading: Ed Davey squares up to Nigel Farage]
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