Labour NEC meets to debate Ed Miliband leadership election reforms

London: Ed Miliband has adjusted his plans to reform Labour leadership elections to make it easier for candidates to get on to the ballot paper after MPs said his initial plans would make it too easy for the leading candidate to engineer a coronation.

Miliband is removing the rights of MPs to have a separate section in the electoral college, and has now agreed that any leadership candidate can only be nominated if he or she has the support of 15 per cent of Labour MPs. He had initially proposed to increase the threshold from the current 12.5 per cent to 20 per cent.

Trade unions have also told Miliband they cannot support plans to restrict their spending to support their favoured candidate in a Labour parliamentary selection.

The cap on spending is being introduced after accusations that unions have subsidised their members to win Labour parliamentary selections. The Unite union was accused of seeking to do so in the Falkirk constituency selection leading to the setting up of the Collins review. The proposal for a 50 cap on how much a union — or any third party — can spend supporting a candidate was seen as central to stop manipulation.

In a compromise, it has been agreed the cap will apply to unions, but the level of the cap needs further discussion. The still-private 42-page Collins review leaked to the Guardian goes to the party’s national executive on Tuesday.

The review sets out far-reaching changes to the union-party relationship partly and is being billed by Miliband as a way of opening up closed politics.

The paper says “by far the most consistent complaint is the ability of some candidates to outspend others particularly if they are supported by third parties. Many people and organisations expressed the view that the cost of a campaign was a real deterrent.”

A union spending cap is part of an effort to apply a tight wider campaign spending cap of no more than 3 per constituency member in all Labour parliamentary selections alongside a shortening of campaign periods in such selections.

Long campaign contests tend to favour professional politicians, such as special advisers or union officials, it is argued. For leadership elections, a cap of 50p per member is proposed by Collins representing a 150,000 cap if the franchise reaches a projected 300,000 members.

The paper also reveals that Labour, subject to the consent of the national executive, will introduce closed primaries for London mayoral candidates with nominations. All Labour members, registered supporters and affiliated supporters will be entitled to vote for the first time.

The paper also rules out primaries in which non-party members can vote for Labour parliamentary nominations. This represents a change from last summer, when Ed Miliband said he wanted to experiment in Labour-held seats where MP standing down and there is low membership.

Critics claim such primaries would prevent a repeat of Falkirk, where a relatively small party threatened to be taken over by a union backed effort to recruit new members.

The paper confirms that Lord Collins, the former party official appointed by Miliband to conduct the review, is proposing a complex two-stage process in which unions’ political levy-payers will in future be linked to the party.

The union member will have to consent to part of his political levy going to the Labour party in the form of an affiliation fee. Separately, they will be asked to fill a form at no extra cost saying they would like to be an affiliated supporter, so giving them a right to vote in leadership elections, attend constituency meetings and vote on policy, but not select the parliamentary candidate.

The internal battle over whether the system of collective affiliation should switch from an opt-out system to an opt-in system is revealed in the wording of the Collins review.

He writes: “What is proposed here is to ask all levy-payers, current and future, to make a positive individual choice over the payment of affiliation fees to the Labour party.

“In the case of new members this will be in the form of a clear choice on the membership form.”

Collins adds: “Different unions have different structures and they should have the freedom to adopt an arrangement most appropriate to their own system and culture. The one common requirement is they must provide all their levy-paying members with an active choice about the payment of affiliation fees.”

Labour officials insisted there was no ambiguity in the wording, saying the reference to a positive choice means union members will have had to say yes on a form when asked if they want some of their political levy to go to Labour in the form of an affiliation fee.

Some unions wanted to argue instead that an annual affiliation fee could be paid if someone had been given a choice, but did not actively reject making the payment, and instead left the form blank.

A requirement to opt in to paying affiliation fees will greatly reduce the amount of union cash given to the party on an annual basis, rather than in one-off donations. Some estimates suggest it will cut union funding of the party by more than 4m a year.

Collins also states the unions will keep their current number of seats in the national executive and on the floor of party conference.