National Policy Formation - some fundamental flaws

Pauline Bryan

The original Party into Power consultation paper considered new ways of making policy within the Labour Party. While it outlined a cumbersome and bureaucratic system of arriving at policy it did offer one improvement on the previous system. It should have allowed detailed discussion, not so much about the immediate issues of day to day policy, but around a vision for the future.

The benefit of the 'resolutionary' approach was that Constituencies, Trade Unions and Socialist Societies could respond to events relatively quickly. They could send resolutions off to the National Executive Committee and attend Annual Conference and make their voices heard. The problem with this system was that it did not allow for any form of detailed policy formation. Those writing resolutions tried to be brief and were often oppositional. Most resolutions were against what was happening, very few expressed meaningful alternatives. The problem with resolutions is that there was little opportunity to put an argument in context or to draw out the way policies hung together across different issues.

Resolutions did not allow the writers or indeed the voters to look at a wider vision of the society they were trying to create. It was hoped, perhaps by the more naïve that Policy Forums could create space for this level of debate.

Seeing all ten Policy Statements together, as has happened in this round of consultation has made one thing clear, the statements are coherent, they do share a common political underpinning. They may not go in to detail about the society they want to create but there is continuity in the underlying vision of the current World and nowhere within the document is there any desire to change or challenge that vision in the future.

The problem this creates is that if you try to change any part of one document you really need to challenge the fundamentals running through the whole batch. Tinkering here and there may be possible, but trying to patch on a socialist policy brings you up against the basic underpinning of a World-view that simply cannot accommodate socialist policies.

From the global politics of Britain in the World to the detail of Democracy, Political Engagement, Citizenship and Equalities there is a shared view which permeates and constrains the potential for an alternative view of the world.

The document Britain in the World starts with a statement "Labour believes Britain's international role must be an extension of our vision at home - to build a fairer world, in which wealth and opportunities are shared by all." Indeed New Labour's international role is an extension of the vision at home - the richest are getting richer and the poorest are getting poorer. The frightening corollary is shown in the next but one paragraph when it then describes the World, particularly the poorer World, as immensely threatening. "Mass migration, asylum, environmental degradation, terrorism, proliferation of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, failed states and the imbalance in global prosperity will shape the course of international relations for years to come. These challenges have the capacity to damage our national interests and to undermine international peace and security".

The poor are seen as threatening. Poor countries are potentially dangerous failed states, poor individuals are potential economic migrants or asylum seekers or worst still, terrorists, prepared to take up arms in defence of an alternative world view. The document commits the Party to support the Government in using its influence "to unify nations around the emerging consensus for a new world order; a consensus based on the universally shared values of freedom, human rights, the rule of law, democracy and the value of justice, the belief in opportunity for all."

That definition of "the new world order" is not most people's understanding of the term. The consensus of the real new world order is about moulding struggling economies to serve the needs of large corporations. Many countries have been forced to adjust their economy in ways that actually damage their own populations and sell any hope of future improvements simply to avoid being crushed by the global financial institutions.

A recent example from Mozambique saw the might of the World Bank enforcing petty restrictions on the ability of cashew nut growers to borrow to buy the necessary tools while at the same time allowing massive subsidies to farmers within the United States. A small country, that has spent decades recovering from colonial domination and civil war, which once had socialist aspirations has been forced by the neo-liberal economic policies of the new world order to attack its own poor.

Britain in the Global Economy takes the same overarching view of globalisation as in Britain in the World. The document expresses a belief that the "increasingly global economy brings with it vastly increased opportunities for countries, business and individuals but at the same time it also brings risk and uncertainties..."

Two issues on the domestic front that link to the financial strategies of the new world order are choice in public services and the continued restriction on public spending to PFI options. Choice for some, but not for others.

The document states that "Because we believe passionately in public services we have a special responsibility to ensure their effectiveness." It asks "How can we ensure that there is enough capacity in our public services in order offer real choice in the provision of public services?" The answer appears to be setting school against school and hospital against hospital. Make them compete for resources and the strongest will win. Hard luck for those obliged to use the services of the weakest.

There is a basic contradiction between national standards for all and the ability of some, often wealthier people, to chase excellence. The result is that people who can move, people who can use the system get the best and those who can't get their leftovers. Parental choice of school often becomes the school's choice of parent. Which parent will help their child achieve the best results and enhance the school's rating and attract more resources?

The use of PFI has now clearly moved from funding for new buildings to the delivery of services. There has been recent concern about the impact on eye care in Oxford hospitals with the introduction of dedicated private provision (paid for by taxpayers). This new service will compete for doctors, nurses and patients with the NHS and take up the easier cheaper routine work. Resources will follow the patient even if it is to the detriment of future services.

Having based their whole economic strategy on the unqualified acceptance of the 'global economy', there are no real alternatives. Neo-liberal economic strategies are accepted as if they were a part of nature, not a deliberately chosen strategy which clearly produces winners and losers. The winners make the rules and the losers suffer the consequences.

This approach then feeds into the document Prosperity for All. The document outlines all the problems faced by the British economy: manufacturing moving to low pay economies; new economies of Eastern Europe providing highly skilled employees; the need for employees to operate in a 24/7 society making themselves as flexible as possible as to how and when they will work; the acceptance that services and not manufacturing is the future for the economy.

All contradictions are ironed out, and everyone in Britain shares the same agenda. "A new and successful economy will allow our people at work to earn good wages, our companies to achieve high profits and for all of us as a nation to afford first class public services." At the same time the Chancellor is lecturing trade unions on the fact that they cannot demand "good wages", because, yes, there is a fundamental contradiction between the needs of the employer and the needs of the employee. The concept Prosperity for All is based on a lie.

With all this flexibility around employment it is likely that many of us will have to depend on benefits for a period in our life and all of us probably hope to achieve a pension. The document on A Modern Welfare State should strike terror in us all. Flexibility (another term for insecurity) tends to make us more timid in our demands and lowers our expectations in the employment market. The 'best' anti-poverty strategy, so the document argues, is full employment. There is not, however, a definition of what is meant by full employment in today's flexible economy. What hours does it involve, does it have to pay a living wage, how long should the contract be. The flexibility of the workers employed to launch one of the new directory enquiry services kept them employed for a full 12 days after its opening.

The emphasis on work, not simply as an economic strategy but more as a moral issue, permeates this document. Work builds moral fibre. Even to the extent that the Government will subsidise employers to pay miserably low wages and that single parents and people with disabilities will be pressured into work that is unrewarding, flexible to the employer, but often inflexible to the worker and as a consequence damaging to family life.

The basis of this document's welfare services is that individuals should create their own provision and to do this they must gamble on the stock exchange. The simple concept of a National Insurance Scheme, paid into through an individual's working life and available to support them when they are unable to work or retired was such a simple concept over 100 years ago. It challenged the poor law mentality of handouts to the poor and replaced it by rights and entitlements. We are in the process of seeing that poor law mentality reassert itself in attempts to target and punish the undeserving poor.

The document on Democracy, Political Engagement, Citizenship and Equalities brings the argument full circle as the paper deals with, among other issues, immigration and asylum seekers. The document refers to 'citizenship ceremonies' surprisingly there is no mention of 'citizenship tests'. No links are drawn between the impact of the global economy on poor countries and the mass migrations that result in a desire to enter richer countries. The detention of asylum seekers in prisons is ignored and the shame of holding children behind razor wire does not get a mention.

The issues relating to democracy within society are reduced to cliché with concerns about involvement and participation. Concerns about involving young people ignore the depiction of them as thugs and criminals. It mirrors to some extent the global picture. The people who are deprived of power and excluded from any real stake in society become frightening, because there are so many of them and they have so little to lose. They must be policed and controlled and treated as the problem. This is the view that permeates all the documents in the National Policy Forum, that is the ruling New World Order.

As well as responding to the individual documents Constituencies should comment on the process. They could support the demand for alternative policy documents (an idea that was in the original Party into Power consultation). We know the supposed consensus model does not work - there is no consensus - just fundamentally different views of the future we want to create. We should call for a return to democratic practices within the party; this may help us reassert democratic practices in the wider world.