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Make your views known

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Each of the eight National Policy Forum commissions are conducting policy consultations. Launched on 4 June, the consultation ends on 30 June. Now’s the time to make your views known.

The International Policy Commission (IPC) covers foreign, international development, and defence policy. Shadow Foreign Secretary Lisa Nandy attends IPC meetings together with Preet Gill and John Healey, Shadow International Development and Defence Secretaries. Our readers will be intrigued to know that the unpopular and outdated ‘humanitarian military intervention’ of the New Labour era is being mooted again. Read Championing internationalism in the post-coronavirus world, the IPC consultation and respond.

How to take part

Each policy commission has its own page on the Labour Policy Forum website, where you can read submissions, comment and vote to agree or disagree with them, and make your own views known.

Using the drop-down menu, you can access
– a searchable list of NPF reps
– consultation documents
– policy statements by the Labour Party, and
– a postal address for sending submissions for cdes without internet access

You don’t have to be a party member or organisation to take part. Individual members of the public or outside organisations can also read the material and make submissions. Anyone visit the NPF site and view the content To participate though, you must register or log in.

Read Championing internationalism in the post-coronavirus world here
Take a look at Labour’s Policy Forum website here

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Trident vs NHS

The Tory government’s risk assessment warned that health pandemics were a major threat to Britain’s security, nuclear attack wasn’t. So why are we spending £205 billion on Trident when the NHS is chronically underfunded askes Labour CND Secretary, Ruth Brown in a recent letter to the Financial Times.

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Defence diversification: covid crisis points the way

Covid19 has seen some companies in the arms industry turn their hand to socially useful production, which is what defence diversification is all about. In the UK, Airbus, BAE Systems, GKN Aerospace, Rolls Royce and Siemens UK are among the companies participating in Ventilator Challenge UK, the government consortium making ventilators.

In this short video made for Labour CND, Sam Mason of the PCS union explains that the response to this health crisis shows we can end the continuing waste of billions of pounds on the UK’s unnecessary nuclear weapons system. We need to lobby for a firm commitment from the new Labour leadership to set up a Shadow Defence Diversification Agency.

Sam Mason, policy office for PSC, ‘a union proudly opposed to nuclear weapons’

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Angela Rayner: ‘I want a world without nuclear weapons’

Angela Rayner MP, Labour’s new Deputy Leader

Congratulations to Angela Rayner on her election as Deputy Leader of the Labour Party. We reproduce below her response to Labour CND’s lobby for a Minister for Peace and Disarmament:

Thank you very much for getting in touch with me about the post of Shadow Minister for Peace and Disarmament and the other manifesto policies. My Shadow Cabinet colleague Fabian Hamilton has done a great job as Shadow Minister for Peace and Disarmament and I absolutely believe that there should be a front bench spokesperson with specific responsibility for disarmament.

I can also confirm that I continue to support the commitments made in the “New Internationalism” section of the 2019 Manifesto and would want to maintain those commitments. I want a world without nuclear weapons and that’s what I want a Labour government to work towards. When the last Tory government tabled their motion to renew Trident in the House of Commons, I voted against it.

Of course, I don’t want to do to workers in shipyards and the supply chain what Thatcher did to pit towns, so any change would need to be underpinned by a plan for replacing those jobs with other skilled, well paid and unionised jobs. I would much rather we invest billions in low carbon, sustainable infrastructure, creating jobs, and building a future for our economy in exporting the means to save lives, not take them – the new, green technologies of the future. I have also made contributions during the hustings on arms sales that you might find interesting, you can watch that here.

Any candidate for Prime Minister who by contrast relishes the thought of unleashing death and destruction isn’t fit for the office. I’d rather work towards reducing the nuclear stockpile across the world because that’s the one thing that would make us all safer. We need an international commitment to disarmament and cooperation; the Tories have dismally failed to provide such leadership and the next Labour government must provide it.

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Minister for Peace & Disarmament remains

Fabian Hamilton, MP for Leeds NE since 1997 retains his Front Bench post as Shadow Minister for Peace and Disarmament

Labour CND is delighted to see that the Front Bench post of Shadow Minister for Peace and Disarmament is to be retained under the new leadership, and will continue to be ably filled by Fabian Hamilton MP. Fabian will be working with colleagues in the Shadow Foreign and Commonwealth Office team, including Catherine West, another committed nuclear disarmamer and Vice President of London Region CND. Congratulations both.

Labour’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office team, led by Foreign Secretary Lisa Nandy, comprises Wayne David (Ministter for Middle East and North Africa) Stephen Doughty (Africa, jointly with DFID) Stephen Kinnock (Asia and Pacific) Catherine West (Europe & Americas) and Fabian Hamilton (Peace and Disarmament). It is not yet known if Fabian’s post has the same brief before, which also ranges across policy areas within the defence team.

Thanks to everyone who participated in Labour CND’s online lobby in support of the Minister of Peace post.

Details of Labour’s new front bench here

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Help Save Labour’s Minister of Peace

Labour CND urges all nuclear disarmers, whether or not you’re members of the Labour Party, to take a minute to lobby Labour MPs and leadership candidates and let them know you want to retain the post of Shadow Minister for Peace and Disarmament. Set up under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership, Fabian Hamilton MP has been Labour’s first ever Shadow Minister for Peace and Disarmament since 2016.