Manchester Labour Stock Transfer Rules "Fix"

12.00.00am UTC (GMT +0000) Wed 3rd Jan 2007

There were extraordinary scenes at a recent meeting of Manchester's Executive Committee, when Labour's Housing Chief Eddy Newman was forced to confirm publicly for the first time that Labour has changed the rules on Stock Transfers. For 10 years, Labour insisted on an absolute majority on an estate (50% of tenants eligible to vote plus one) in favour of transfer. But, in a major policy change, from now on a simple majority (50%+1 of those voting) will be enough for estates to leave municipal control.

However, a paper by Council officials did not make any reference to the u-turn until Cllr Newman was challenged by Cllr Ashley at the last Council Executive Meeting. Only then did the Labour Executive agree to publish the policy change in its minutes.

Cllr Ashley said:

"We have forced Labour to come clean. They had changed the rules in private and not told anyone. Now, their secret u-turn has been made public."

Cllr Ashley added:

"These rules existed to make sure the Council had a proper mandate to transfer stock and did all it could to encourage people to vote. Now, we could easily have a transfer without the majority on an estate in favour of it. Labour are changing the rules to try to fix the result."

Ends......