CLPD 2004 AGM Resolution 1

Labour Party Policy-making

This AGM greatly welcomes the decision of the 2003 Party Conference that future Conferences shall have the opportunity to debate a larger number of "contemporary" motions.

Even advocates of the "Partnership in Power" model now recognise the Party's widespread dissatisfaction with its workings.

In this connection, we note that a number of constitutional amendments have already been submitted for debate at the 2004 Conference whereby, in a year when the Conference is considering final stage documents from the National Policy Forum, each Constituency Labour Party and affiliated organisations could submit an amendment to these documents.

We believe that this simple reform would add significantly to the clarity, transparency and precision of Labour's policy- making - and above all to democracy and participation - to the benefit of Labour's membership as a whole. It would enable our Conference to add or delete particular policy items and no longer be forced to accept or reject an NPF document in its entirety, on a crude take-it-or-leave-it basis.

We therefore now call on our EC, as a matter of priority, to campaign among affiliates and CLPs for active political support for the constitutional amendments in question.

This campaign, however, will only be effective if linked to the systematic publicising within the party of the current way political decisions are arrived at and how political input is denied to constituency and levy-paying members at the National Policy Forum, National Executive and at the Labour Party Conference.