Jeremy Corbyn is facing a bust-up over immigration policy as senior MPs, party officials and union leaders meet to agree Labor’s election manifesto.
Some ofMr Corbyn’sclosest allies, including the shadow home secretary Diane Abbott, want Labor to back freedom of movement after the UK leaves the EU.
But the Labor leader’s chief trade union cheerleader, Len McCluskey of Unite, is demanding curbs on free movement to protect jobs and maintain levels of pay for UK workers.
The dispute will be thrashed out at a so-called Clause V meeting of the shadow cabinet, national executive and senior union leaders to decide what goes into the manifesto and what stays out.
Speaking on the eve of the meeting, Mr Corbyn told Labor activists in Lancaster: “When our manifesto arrives next week it’s going to blow your socks off. You’re going to love it.”
The row over free movement follows a strongly pro-migration motion calling for it to be extended beyond EU citizens being passed at Labor’s conference in September.
This week Mr McCluskey set the scene for a showdown at the manifesto meeting by declaring: “It’s wrong in my view to have any greater free movement of labor unless you get stricter labor market regulation.”
In an uncompromising interview with The Guardian, he said the motion passed at the Brighton conference was not a “sensible approach” and that he planned to express that view at Saturday’s meeting.
But Ms Abbott later hit back in a defiant tweet, saying Labor would “maintain” the rights of EU nationals in the UK and extend freedom of movement rights “to all those legally entitled to be here, including our own citizens”.
Mr Corbyn hinted at a climbdown or compromise on Thursday when he said Labour’s manifesto would not include “necessarily every last dot and comma of every resolution passed at conference”.
He has been challenged by the Liberal Democrats to make a clear manifesto commitment on immigration – the party says it would be a “betrayal of future generations” if he fails to do so.
The Lib Dems are promising to preserve free movement and have plans to resettle 10, 000 unaccompanied refugee children per year if they get into power.
Anot her radical Labor policy passed in Brighton, incorporating private schools into the state system, is expected to be considerably weakened when it appears in the manifesto.
But policies definitely in the manifesto will be:
- Brexit: negotiating a new deal with the EU and submitting it to a referendum within six months.
- Nationalization: BT Openreach, railways, Royal Mail, water and National Grid.
- Workers’ rights: a return to collective bargaining.
- Four-day week: a target of achieving this by 2030.
- Zero-hours contracts: banned.
- Climate change: the aim of net zero carbon emissions by 2030.
- Shares: an “inclusive ownership fund” for employees.
Coinciding with the Clause V meeting in London, Labor is stepping up its attack on the Tories on the NHS, claiming analysis reveals that staff are working a million hours of unpaid overtime every week because of under-staffing.
Labor says the most recent NHS staff survey shows nearly 270, 000 staff said they worked extra hours for free every week – at an average of 2.3 hours a week – and two thirds said their organization had not enough staff for them to do their job properly.
Doctors and dentists between them worked 125, 000 hours a week (an average of 3.6 hours), allied health professionals such as occupational therapists and physiotherapists worked 210, 000 (an average of 2.2 hours), and nurses worked 380, 000 (an average of three hours).
Shadow health secretary Jonathan Ashworth used the figures to take a swipe at Boris Johnson, who is out on the campaign trail again in his new battle bus.
The prime minister is reviving a David Cameron slogan, “Vote Blue, Go Green”, promising a trebling of tree-planting to at least 30 million and creating a new £ 500 m Blue Planet fund to protect the oceans.
Existing woodland like the Northern Forest and Northumberland Forest would be expanded, say the Tories, and new forests would be created across the country. Towns and cities would also benefit with more trees planted in urban areas to improve air quality, they claim.
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Part of a £ 640 m Nature for Climate fund would also be used to restore degraded peatland across the country, turning it from a source of carbon to a means of soaking up carbon, as well as replenishing native wildlife populations.
“There is nothing more conservative than protecting our environment and these measures sit alongside our world-leading commitment to net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, “the PM said.
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