ANNUAL REPORT 2014 Index 1. Contents/2014 Committee 2. Chair’s Report 3. Fiona Mactaggart MP 4. Andrew Smith MP 5. Rowenna Davis - PPC Itchen 6. Nancy Platt - PPC Brighton Kemptown 7. 2015 Dates

Regional Labour Link Committee 2014 Steve Milford Chair Ann Black Vice Chair Mark Chiverton Isle of Wight LG Andrew Abercrombie Hampshire LG Abdul Rahman Oxfordshire Health Andy Stenning LGBT Committee (Job Share) Brian Walter Arun District Chris Weller LGBT Committee (Job Share Dennis Luchmun Kent & Medway Mental Health Robert Pitt Young Members Nicola Keen Women's Committee Sarah Barwick Kent LG Ben Lloyd-Shogbesan Black Members Committee

Regional Political Officer Ryan Slaughter [email protected]

Committee Administrator Catherine Ramfos [email protected]

1 Chair’s Report

Thank you to all of the activists who have supported the SE Labour Link and associated Labour Party Campaigns throughout 2014. The Regional Labour Link Annual Forum was held in March to coincide with the SE Labour Party’s Regional Conference in Crawley. This was a well-attended Forum, with several new Members. We passed two motions – on the Transatlantic Trade & Investment Partnership (getting assurances of support from our Labour MEPs) and a 2nd on Increasing Workplace Representation. Anneliese Dodds was amongst the speakers and went on to become our Labour MEP for the Region. Andrew Pakes PPC for Milton Keynes (South) was another speaker and we are supporting his campaign. On 23 April 2014, women UNISON members and Labour Party candidates from across the Region came together for the first ever SE Labour Link Supporters event. This enabled women members to raise issues affecting them directly with Labour candidates. It is hoped that this successful event was the first of many to come in the future.

The Committee met on 2 June and discussed the recent Local and European Election results. Nationally Labour had done very well in the Local Elections, with more Labour Councillors elected than all of the other parties put together. In the Region, Labour gained 27 Councillors (more than the gains made by all of the other parties), with crucial advances in Oxford, Milton Keynes and Reading. Southampton stayed Labour, following the previous year’s spectacular swing which gave us control over the city. But most pleasing was Labour’s ousting of the Tories in Crawley to take control of the Council and provide a platform to take the seat at the General Election. Congratulations to all of the successful candidates, several with UNISON connections and thanks to all of those who helped out during the campaigns.

The elections highlighted the threat from UKIP and we pledged support for Will Scobie, who is standing against Nigel Farage in Thanet South. In advance of this, however, we faced the Rochester & Strood by-election, where we supported our excellent candidate, Naushabah Khan. A big thank you to members who braved the wind and rain to deliver leaflets and talked to local residents at our action day in the constituency. Despite losing Naushabah has an excellent chance in the General Election, with a positive message from Labour – TogetherWeKhan!

September saw the launch of Labour’s campaign to retain its two Southampton MPs and to consolidate its control over the City Council. UNISON Labour Link activists from across the Region attended a rally, addressed by the two standing MPs, and Alan Whitehead and the new candidate for Itchen, Rowenna Davis.

2 Chair’s Report

In December, we had our Committee meeting in Westminster in order to meet up directly with the Region’s MPs. We had a message of support from Andrew Smith, who operates a model of campaigning in Oxford East. John Denham spoke on his research on Labour values in the Region and the paper “Winning in the South”. It concluded that working people and union members in particular faced the same issues in the South as in the North – the need for quality jobs, social housing, affordable housing and public services. Fiona Mactaggart outlined the voter-id work being done in Slough and spoke about her work on the issues affecting Older Women – higher unemployment levels, an age-related pay gap and the need for a “right to leave” for care responsibilities.

The Committee reaffirmed its target areas for the General Election with specific events planned in Crawley, Reading, Southampton. Milton Keynes, Brighton, Hastings, Dover and Thanet. I urged all Committee members to support key-seat candidates close to them and get rid on the ConDems in the New Year! The Tories have made it clear that they will launch an all-out attack on unions if re-elected – further spending limits on campaigns, more workforce fragmentation, thresholds for strike action and the removal of facility time.

This election has been described as the most important for a generation – in fact, it could be the most important of our lifetime!

UNISON held its Political Fund ballot in November and got resounding support to continue with our political campaigning. 2014 has been a busy year – but we need to make 2015 a busier one, so if you’re angry about what the ConDem Govt has done, get active in your local area or nearest key seat – let’s get UNISON policies into the Labour Party and the Labour Party into Government!

Best Wishes

Steve Milford

Steve Milford South East Region Labour Link Chair

3 Fiona Mactaggart Member of Parliament - Slough

Politics should respect the different experiences of people and for the last couple of years I have been trying to bring the experience of older women into the centre of political debate.

I helped to establish Labour’s Commission on Older Women, chaired by Harriet Harman and on which I sit with fellow commissioner Gloria Mills, UNISON’s Head of Equalities.

Helped to make sure that the Commission hears the experiences of women at work by commissioning a survey of the Union’s older women members, resulting in the excellent report Women Deserve Better. After the commission had been set up we have seen growing evidence of the difficulties, barriers and outright discrimination faced by women workers over the age of 50 and the changes they need to allow them to balance their complex lives.

Older women earn less, have smaller pensions, find it difficult to balance work and caring and struggle to be seen and heard in public life. These are the worrying findings of both the work of the Commission and UNISON’s member survey. The TUC’s 2014 Age Immaterial report showed that women over 50 working full-time earn on average only £15,000 –only 80p for every pound the average man of the same age earns. And UNISON found that less than half of older women members they surveyed work full-time, part-time while older women usually earn about £10,000.

So they aren’t helped by raising tax thresholds. These women have seen the value of their take home pay fall faster than for most workers. And older women work in sectors where public spending cuts mean fewer jobs so unemployment among this group has increased.

Many older women struggle to balance work with caring for their family; elderly relatives and grandchildren depend on them. Mothers who cannot afford paid-for childcare often depend on granny care so they can work. More hours free child care promised to working parents by Labour will help but more is needed, we need a right to leave to support carers, especially to allow people time to adjust to sudden changes in caring responsibilities.

And when Gloria and I presented this work at Labour women’s conference this year we agreed that it’s time to identify the companies who pay hard working women so little that they depend on tax credits and other taxpayer subsidies to get by, We must end such exploitation by employers.

Fiona Mactaggart MP Slough

4 Andrew Smith Member of Parliament - Oxford East

I am proud to represent so many UNISON members, and thank the union and its members for the support they have given me and our local Labour Party.

Oxford is one of the major medical centres in the South-East, with several thousand UNISON Health members in the John Radcliffe, Nuffield, Churchill, Warneford and Littlemore Hospitals, as well as many more Unison members in care homes, home care, social services, universities and local government. I enjoy working with the UNISON branches and have met a number of times with local UNISON activists to discuss the threat to our NHS, the negative impact of cuts on equality for BME workers, and other issues. I have campaigned consistently for a fair pay rise for health workers and other public sector workers, including taking up the issue with Ministers and visiting picket lines. I have also campaigned alongside Anneliese Dodds MEP against the very worrying aspects of the proposed TTIP trade deal which threaten our public services. Labour’s clear and firm policy is that the NHS must be excluded from any trade deal. It must not be able to be used to threaten employment, social and environmental regulation, and there must not be any mechanism that could allow corporations to sue states for providing services in the public sector rather than allowing private business to bid.

I have also conducted a survey of local home care provision which has revealed that working in home care is unaffordable for many in our area. Since the Tory-run County Council privatised the service, many carers employed by agencies on low wages have not been paid for travel costs, meaning effectively that they are getting below the National Minimum Wage. I have taken up this scandal extensively and will continue to do so. Last year I called and introduced a Westminster debate on the plight of home care workers, and in March this year I spoke out against the use of zero-hours contracts in home care. I campaigned against 15- minute home care visits, and the County Council has now said they will drop these, In the European election Labour topped the poll in Oxford with an overall majority of nearly 5,000 across both my own constituency and part of the Tory-held Oxford West and Abingdon constituency; UKIP was beaten into fifth place. It was a great pleasure to help in the election of Anneliese Dodds MEP, who was easily elected with the Labour vote nearly doubling since 2009. Anneliese lives in Oxford, on the Rose Hill estate, and is a long-standing and active trade unionist who has used her position to speak out on TTIP, on the need for an industrial plan for fair economic growth, on the need for many more apprenticeships and in defence of the Agricultural Wages Board, among many other issues.

I look forward to continuing to work closely with UNISON and its members to advance public services and the well-being of those who provide them.

Rt Hon Andrew Smith MP Oxford East

5 Rowenna Davis Labour Party PPC - Southampton Itchen

One MP in a suit isn’t going to change the world, nor can all the politicians in Westminster. If we want to rebuild our communities attract new jobs, save vital public services, fix climate change we are going to need to work together. If I want to win this election, I’m going to need the support of UNISON’s members, but after the election, I’m going to need it even more. Let me give you some examples. This winter we were told that our local NHS Walk-In Centre in Bitterne was going to close. It helps over 20,000 patients a year on the east side of the river where there are no hospitals and waiting times for GPs are under serious strain. Campaigning with the community and Unison members, we put together a petition of thousands, and managed to negotiate our way into keeping it open. There is no way that I could have kept that Centre open on my own. But by creating a campaign so big it couldn’t be ignored, we managed to save this vital service, reduce some of the tough pressures on A&E and give thousands of local residents the chance to receive treatment this winter.

“Fair Employment Week” was another campaign we ran in partnership with UNISON last year. During this week we raised awareness about the exploitation of zero hour contracts, minimum wage laws and employment rights. We offered free legal training in rights at work and set up a hotline for people to report abuses. Together we uncovered some powerful stories and persuaded people that they didn’t have to accept bullying and abuse.

What I’m interested in now is how to attract more leaders from the ranks of union members to help make our city an even stronger, fairer place. I’ve seen first-hand how talented some of these workers are. Last Christmas I was invited to do a night shift with the South Central Ambulance service, a trip that UNISON members helped set up. For ten hours I drove around our city with a team and saw how they risked their lives to get to people within minutes to provide lifesaving help, case after case. I want to work with people like this to help improve our city, and I’d like to see more of them going into politics.

So if you’re reading this, and you want to get involved, please do get in touch. The challenges of today are too big to leave them to politicians. It’s up to all of us to play our part. I’m so grateful for all the help that Unison has offered so far, and I hope we can continue to work together for the good of our city and its people.

Rowenna Davis Parliamentary Prospective Candidate - Southampton Itchen Please email [email protected] if you’d like to get involved

6 Nancy Platts Labour PPC Brighton Kemptown & Peacehaven

Brighton Kemptown and Peacehaven has a Conservative MP with a 1,328 majority, making it 25th in Labour’s 106 battleground seats. With one in five children here living in poverty, we have proof of the total failure of the Coalition government to deliver social justice. But sadly we have seen some people turn to UKIP. UKIP peddles the politics of fear blaming people from other countries for a lack of housing, secure jobs or school places. That fire power needs to be re-directed at the Tory/Lib Dem government which has given tax breaks to millionaires and under whom we have seen the rise of ‘the disposable employee’ – if elected I will vote for a total ban on zero-hours contracts People are disillusioned with politicians and need to see more working class people get elected who are not part of the existing ‘Westminster bubble.’ I hope that’s where I can be a refreshing change because I am not a career politician. I left school at 18 and went straight into work. At Breakthrough Breast Cancer, Asthma UK and Diabetes UK I worked for the patients and families who rely on the NHS. At Daycare Trust I campaigned successfully for a SureStart children's centre in every community. Now I am fighting to save those same centres from cuts and closure.

Locally, I have led a community campaign to replace a GP surgery which was planned to be closed following the retirement of its GPs. I held a public meeting and led a delegation to ask questions of the Health and Wellbeing Board. And we won!

Cuts are not the only option. It is clear that we need to end the scourge of low pay, zero-hour contracts and insecure jobs. Public sector workers should not be paying the price for the deficit and we need to commit to investment in jobs, economic regeneration and making work pay. I strongly support a living wage for all. But how do we find the money to tackle the deficit and deliver better public services, secure jobs and offer that hope so people want to get out and vote? Firstly, I firmly believe that Trident should not be renewed and that the £100 billion (over 30 years) that Trident costs would be better spent improving the lives of ordinary people. And I welcome Labour’s commitment to tackle tax avoidance and the introduction of a Mansion Tax on properties worth over £2m to help pay for an NHS Time to Care Fund. Labour will cut taxes for 24 million people on middle and lower incomes by introducing a lower 10p starting rate of tax and we will restore the 50p rate of tax for those earning over £150,000. But above all investment in the economy and people in jobs will generate growth that can pay down the deficit. The Coalition policy of cuts to public services, welfare and tax breaks for millionaires has failed.

Nancy Platts PPC Brighton Kemptown and Peacehaven www.nancyplatts.org.uk/ Email: [email protected] : @Nancy_Platts

7 Dates 2015

Monday 16th March 50 Days for Change Event, UNISON Centre

Saturday 21st March Thanet Trade Union Action Rally, Elms Club, Ramsgate Friday 27th March General Election Key Seat Briefing, UNISON Centre Monday 30th March Dissolution of Parliament Monday 20th April Deadline for Voter Registration Tuesday 28th April Worker Memorial Day Monday 4th May May Day Thursday 7th May GENERAL ELECTION Monday 1st June Regional Labour Link Committee, London 16th - 19th June UNISON National Delegate Confer- ence Friday 3rd/Saturday 4th July National Labour Link Forum Tuesday 1st September Regional Labour Link Committee, London Saturday 26th September Labour Party National Women's Conference, Brighton 27th - 30th September Labour Party National Conference Tuesday 1st December Regional Labour Link Committee, London

8 A huge thanks to all the committee members, activists and CLPs who have been involved in UNISON South East Labour Link campaigning in 2014