Why Owen Smith deserves a close look

The leadership election is on - and Labour Party members and supporters have the opportunity to reflect on the future of the party - and consider which path to take. There are serious decisions to make - and as a Labour Party member for over 40 years, I want to see ideas which will lead to a Labour Government.

Owen Smith has set out his vision - and I invite you to consider his ideas. I welcome any comments.

 
The MP says he will tackle inequality and transform the tax system if he becomes leader of the Labour Party

Owen Smith today sets out bold plans to overhaul the tax system and give workers a pay rise.

The Labour leadership contender ­promised to bring back wage councils to stop greedy bosses exploiting staff.

And he pledged to ­transform the tax system to end the “ballooning” inequality in Britain.

In an interview with the Daily Mirror, Mr Smith also reached out to supporters of Jeremy Corbyn by claiming he would be just as “radical” as the left-wing Labour chief.

He said: “My offer is that in me you have someone just as radical as Jeremy. I will bow to no one in terms of my socialist belief, my heroes are Nye Bevan and Keir Hardie, great Labour titans.

“I will take their legacy forward but communicate to people and give people faith we can do it.” Setting out his stall, the Pontypridd MP pledged plans for a £200billion investment fund to build schools, transport links and hospitals and kick start the economy.

He also wants to rewrite Clause Four – Labour’s defining mission statement – to include a duty to tackle inequality.

At the heart of this will be the reintroduction of wage councils – a forum for bosses, unions, workers and the Government – to agree pay, terms and conditions. Wage councils were set up in the 1930s but the majority were phased out by the Tories in the 1980s and 1990s. The last to go was the Agricultural Wages Board, which was axed in England under David Cameron.

Mr Smith said he fought for Wales to keep its own Agricultural Wages Board and, as a result, farm workers there are now paid 6% more than their equivalents in England.

He continued: “That’s a model we should be thinking about right across our economy.

“I think there’s a real case for re-inventing modern wage councils, operating sector by sector, looking at the specific terms and conditions in individual sectors and arguing for better terms and wages for workers in those sectors.

“They were a brilliant way in which we gave working people a bulwark against employers eroding wages and it was a way in which people could bind together and argue for better terms and conditions.

"I would start with retail and hospitality where so many workers, in particular women, are often working in insecure circumstances on low wages and often on zero hours contracts.

“Other countries have these still, Germany has them, Sweden has them.

“They are very powerful way in which you have an independent debate about the right wage levels and argue in that forum for better terms and conditions.”

The Welsh MP, who has pledged to bring back the 50p tax rate for high earners, also said he would transform the way people are taxed. He added: “We need to go further than that [the 50p higher rate]. We need to ­overhaul our tax system.

“The last Labour government was too timid in looking at taxation – we haven’t had a major overhaul of tax in this country for many, many generations.”

On the current Leader -

“[Jeremy]  left Labour sidelined in the debate. We are not thought of as being a government in waiting. We are not thought of as being a credible government and that is a dereliction of duty on his behalf because we have to be about winning power in order to put our principles and values into practices.”

Mr Smith insisted he could continue carrying Mr Corbyn’s torch of fighting for social justice and economic reform while also being able to “heal the party.”

And in a dig at the Tony Blair and Gordon Brown years, Mr Smith said there would be none of the “nuance and timidity” of recent Labour governments.

He said: “We can’t just say we are anti-austerity, what does it mean to be pro-prosperity? For me that means a Labour government doing traditional Labour things: investing in our communities, investing in public services, investing in the infrastructure we need – schools, hospitals, new roads.

“It’s not rocket science, it’s a traditional Labour platform I am standing on. If we can get back to that without some of the nuance and timidity we have seen in the Labour Party, the managerialism that has held us back from being radical in the past, then we can have a new Labour offer to the country that people would realise is properly Labour but fit for the 21st century.”