Ministers are preparing to row back on controversial union reforms that could cost Labour £8 million in funding, it has emerged.
A series of climbdowns is being prepared after Labour, the Liberal Democrats and crossbench peers said that the plan was a partisan attempt to slash the funding of an opposition party.
The government wants members to “opt in” every five years to their union’s political funds, which are used to pay Labour affiliation fees and party donations. At present workers have actively to opt out of paying into the funds.
However, ministers are now expected to give unions far longer to switch to the new system than the three months proposed. It is also expected that members would not have to renew their decision to opt in every five years. Unions could also be given a long transitional period to transfer their members on to the new system.
All the concessions are expected to soften the blow on Labour’s finances. They could be announced by ministers in the Lords within weeks.
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The government is determined not to drop the plan entirely, however. Whitehall sources insisted that all trade unionists would “eventually have to make a positive choice to pay into their union’s political fund”.
A cross-party committee of peers, formed after the outcry over the measures, recommended major changes to the plan. Lord Burns, the crossbench chairman of the committee, said that the proposed changes would mitigate “the worst impacts on the trade unions and the Labour party”.
His inquiry also recommended that all major parties should immediately resume talks over reforming party funding. Attempts to do so in the last parliament came to nothing.
Nick Boles, the employment minister, said the committee had accepted “the principle that members should be asked to make an active choice about whether to opt-in to a union’s political fund”.
•Two far-left trade union leaders have been admitted to the Labour party. Matt Wrack, general secretary of the Fire Brigades Union, was expelled more than two decades ago and Mark Serwotka, the Public and Commercial Services Union leader, was granted membership after his attempt to vote in the Labour leadership contest was blocked because he was deemed not to “share the values” of the party.
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The decisions have been criticised by moderates, but a senior Labour source said that the party’s rules had been robustly applied.