THE trade unions’ influence over the Labour Party should be curbed because their agenda is all about defeating the Government, a veteran of the movement will say tomorrow.

The march towards merged “super-unions” means that two union chiefs could meet in a backroom and determine party policy, Sir Bill Morris, the former general secretary of the Transport and General Workers’ Union, says in an interview to be broadcast on ITV1. He calls on Labour to set up a commission to examine its links with the unions — both their funding of the party and their voting strength. The remarks from Sir Bill, who is to be elevated to the Lords next week, will be scrutinised because of his closeness to Gordon Brown.

He tells the Sunday Programme on GMTV that if “we are renewing the Labour Party from a policy perspective, we’ve also got to ensure that the constitution is fit for purpose. I’m not sure that it [is] at the moment, given the march to mega-unions and megamergers.” On the evidence of recent Labour conferences, “it seems to me that trade unions have an agenda not to promote some of the policy issues, but merely to defeat the Government, defeat the platform”.

His union reacted sharply. “Sir Bill has every right to his opinions, even if they are different to those he held when he was our general secretary,” a spokesman observed last night.

Sir Bill’s remarks appear to reflect doubts over plans for a merger of the TGWU, Amicus and the GMB into a union that would wield 40 per cent of votes at Labour’s conference.

The unions remain Labour’s biggest financial backer and retain a heavy input into policy plans. The Warwick agreement, signed before the election, commits the Government to meet a range of demands.

Sir Bill says that the unions’ mandate has declined with falling membership: “There are huge swaths where there’s no representation at all. If you’re not speaking for your members, you cannot be speaking for the party and there needs to be radical reform and the trade unions need to recognise that it’s a new agenda and a new relationship has to emerge.”

Referring to the speculation over Labour’s deputy leadership, he says: “My worry is that we have a plethora of people lining up and having this great debate and it’s debilitating to the party.” Alan Johnson, the Education Secretary, and Jack Straw, Leader of the Commons, have confirmed their interest in succeeding John Prescott as Deputy Prime Minister, and Harriet Harman has hinted at it.

The work required is in stopping the “haemorrhaging” of party membership, Sir Bill says. “I hope that some of the people touring the television studios and declaring their candidacy recognise that there is no vacancy.”

BLUNT SIR BILL

• Described David Blunkett’s proposal to tag asylum-seekers as “draconian, nasty and repressive”
• Challenged Ford over racism at its Dagenham plant, saying that the company was sitting on a tinderbox of tension
• On the closure of the Longbridge Rover plant: “BMW has accepted the hospitality of the West Midlands community and then decided it should just walk away”
• On the War on Terror: “When we said on September 11 that we support our Prime Minister, we didn’t say we would support the Government undermining our liberty, our freedom and our democracy. And we didn’t say that we should declare war on Islam, as we have seen” (Interview in The Guardian in 2002)

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