A template motion on cuts and taxing the wealthy.

You may want to modify the text locally to include a call to support or sponsor local labour-movement committees or protests against the benefit cuts, and a call on your Labour MP (if you have one) to vote against the benefit cuts in Parliament.

The text below, a version of a motion passed by Calder Valley CLP, can be adapted for labour movement debate on the cuts now projected or actual across benefits, local services, overseas aid, civil service jobs, and the NHS.

We note:

Projected cuts to benefits, by narrowing access to disability and incapacity benefits

Cuts to the UK aid Budget to finance military spending.

Large cuts to local services being forced on councils, for lack of central government funding

Plans to cut civil service jobs

Continuing cuts in NHS Trusts and delay to hospital repair and rebuilding programmes; government demands for cuts in Integrated Care Board staffing. We are not against reversing the Tories’ 2012 to contract-out NHS management to “NHS England” as an arms’ length body; we do not defend the ICB model of NHS administration; but we call for redeployment and retraining rather than redundancies.

We realise that the incoming Labour government faces a worse financial situation than previously thought. We call on the Labour government to finance and improve services by taxing the wealthy, for example by a wealth tax and by raising capital gains tax rates to match taxes on wage-income. Labour must improve social provision rather than cutting it.