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(5)
The GFTU calls for:
a.
The new Children’s Minister demanding that all plans for the marketization
and privatisation of children’s services are stopped.
b.
All unions with an interest in children’s services to work together to
campaign in the public and parliament against this threat to ensure
that resources continue to be directed at providing good public services for
children and families on a “not for profit” basis.
(6)
This biennial Conference is appalled the Government proposed wholesale
privatisation of Children’s Services. Decisions about vulnerable children, including
removing them from their families, are some of the most difficult and sensitive that
child protection professionals have to make.
(7)
Conference believes establishing a market in child protection would create perverse
incentives for private companies to either take more children into care or leave too
many living within dangerous families.
(8)
Napo is already witnessing the chaos, confusion and increased risks arising from
Government efforts to privatise a huge part of the Probation Service despite the
work/staff being awarded the gold standard for service provision. The Government
repeated the same argument about private companies providing children’s services
to “encourage innovation and improve outcomes for children”.
(9)
Whilst pre-election considerations and immediate campaigning by Napo and others
in the sector contributed to these plans being put on hold for now, the GFTU and
affiliates must be vigilant and ready if they re-emerge post an election.
Resolution 10
Surveillance of Journalists
(1)
This conference condemns police surveillance of journalists, trade unionists and
activists, noting the growing evidence of such unacceptable activity that appears to
have reached unprecedented levels.
(2)
Conference notes the revelations that the Metropolitan Police used the Regulation
of Investigatory Powers legislation (RIPA) to secretly access a journalist’s phone
records, internal emails and other sensitive data as a means of exposing sources
and whistleblowers, without judicial oversight. Further investigations found that
many other police forces have also exploited RIPA to spy on journalists and identify
their sources – breaching a key tenet of journalistic freedom and the NUJ’s Code of
Conduct, the responsibility to protect one’s sources.
(3)
Such methods have also been used against trade unionists and activists as a tool to
criminalise dissent and prevent scrutiny of the powerful.
(4)
It is in that context that increasing numbers of journalists and activists have been
secretly placed on a police database of so-called “domestic extremists”. Six NUJ
members are currently involved in collective legal action to challenge their inclusion
on the database, which details intimate details about their lives, including their
work, medical history and even their sexuality.
(5)
This conference condemns the lack of action on the part of government to tackle
these outrages, and calls on the GFTU to campaign against such outrageous use
of surveillance, to call for the restrictions of RIPA and similar pieces of legislation;
and as part of that campaign to encourage activists in the movement to carry out
subject access requests under the Data Protection Act to expose the extent of state
surveillance and support union’s taking legal challenges.
Implementation
The GFTU immediately joined in with
those campaigning against the new
proposals planned by the government
and existing restrictions and
behaviours.