As the Labour Party gears up for its National Policy Forum weekend starting on Friday 25th July, Progress, the New Labour pressure group, is calling for the NPF to endorse policies which seek to rebuild New Labour’s winning coalition of support, rather than bending to sectional interests. A statement to be published on Wednesday 23rd July will say:

“Labour’s comeback in the 1990s and our subsequent three general election wins were built on a politics which spoke to the entire country rather than sectional interests. Today, however, the Labour Party is in danger of forgetting one of the key lessons of our success which was to reflect the concerns of the majority of the public, rather than a minority of interest groups.

If Labour is to have a chance of winning the next general election it must adopt a positive vision for the years ahead and reject the failed politics of yesteryear. Of course, there are still far too many workers who are vulnerable to unscrupulous employers and have no union representation, so proper protection in the workplace is important. But last week’s union wishlist is an echo of the industrial relations of the 1970s and has little resonance with the public in their working lives today.

Instead of rejecting New Labour, the party should use eleven years of solid achievements as a foundation to move forward with a clear bold programme of reforms to help people realise their aspirations for greater control in their lives. It is neither a return to the 1970s nor the 1990s that is needed. The challenges that Britain faces in the future call for an agenda where opportunity and power is far more fairly distributed in society. The Darzi Review and James Purnell’s welfare reform proposals are a step in the right direction, but a coherent cross-government programme is absent. So the challenge for the NPF this weekend is to agree far-sighted reforms in the same vein as the last Warwick agreement where plans for a push towards academies and lower waits in the NHS were adopted. In the absence of a set of future-orientated, transformative ideas, the party risks a return to a politics which is unrepresentative of the country at large and bends to producer-driven demands.

David Cameron would like nothing better than for Labour to return to the politics of the past. We would make a huge mistake if we walked away from the radical centre of British politics. As our victories in 1997, 2001 and 2005 all show that is where elections are won. This weekend we have to show that we have a modern agenda for the future, not the long-past, or the recent-past.

Progress is leading the debate in the party by setting out what a progressive radical manifesto might look like at the next election. Its five policy groups, launched in February, have this month set out a number of ideas for 2010 including:

• Allowing the best local councils to take over health commissioning responsibility from unelected primary care trusts.
• Electing senior police chiefs.
• Paying providers on the basis of how users themselves assess the performance of local services.
• Giving parents a credit to spend on childcare as they wanted, with the credit made up of the childcare element of the working tax credit, the nursery education grant and the Sure Start general grant to local authorities, weighted to give more to low-income families or people in training for employment.
• Giving pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds that are struggling or falling behind a new ‘Education Credit’ which could be spent on providing extra one-to-one support either in school or with an approved educational tutor after agreement between the parent, pupil and school.
• Giving directly elected mayors responsibility for local policing, health, and local government to break down the barriers in tackling crime
• Giving local people the information they need to hold the criminal justice system to account – including crime maps and reoffending data
• Establishing community courts nationwide with powers to make offenders pay back through work in the community
• Giving prisons a new duty to reduce reoffending rates and put those that fail under new, locally accountable control
• Extending the concept of individual budgets to job seekers who can work in partnership with personal advisors to find the right packages of support to get them back into sustainable work
• Creating a single income replacement benefit with a clear set of entitlements for all out-of-work claimants
• Placing conditions on the receipt of all out-of-work benefits, and consideration to be given as to whether conditions could be placed on other benefits such as housing

The five policy group discussion papers can be found here: http://www.progressives.org.uk/consultations/challenge/

ABOUT PROGRESS
Progress is an independent organisation of Labour party members, set up in 1996, which aims to promote a radical and progressive politics for the 21st century. Progress seeks to discuss, develop and advance the means to create a more free, equal and democratic Britain which plays an active role in Europe and the wider world. Go to the Progress website for more information: archive.progressonline.org.uk

Media contact: Jessica Asato, Deputy Director, 07939 594 634