The comments made by Anneliese Dodds, the Chair of the Labour Party, on 21 October 2022.
Sad to see the passing of Baroness Blood, a political giant and tireless campaigner for women and on integration in Northern Ireland. She will be greatly missed.
The comments made by Anneliese Dodds, the Chair of the Labour Party, on Twitter on 19 October 2022.
Labour will:
▪️ ban all forms of conversion therapy
▪️ appoint an envoy to promote LGBT+ rights globally
▪️ modernise the Gender Recognition Act and protect the Equality Act
Labour leading on LGBT+ rights. The Tories paralysed by chaos.
The comments made by Anneliese Dodds, the Chair of the Labour Party, on Twitter on 19 October 2022.
Days in office, 2022
2 – Michelle Donelan, Education Secretary
38 – Kwasi Kwarteng, Chancellor
43 – Suella Braverman, Home Secretary
63 – Nadhim Zahawi, Chancellor
? – Liz Truss, Prime Minister
This is chaos. If the Tories can’t govern, get out of the way for a party that can.
The letter sent by Anneliese Dodds, the Chair of the Labour Party, to Jake Berry, the Chair of the Conservative Party, on 2 October 2022.
The speech made by Anneliese Dodds, the Chair of the Labour Party and Shadow Minister for Women and Equalities, on 25 September 2022.
I want to start with some words of tribute to our late Queen, Elizabeth II. For seventy years, she devoted herself to our nation, the Commonwealth and the British people. She did so much to bring Britain together, through the good times and the bad.
Our country made great strides for women’s equality during the Elizabethan era – from measures for equal pay to the legalisation of abortion to the passing of the Sex Discrimination and Equality Acts.
Those changes only happened because of Labour Governments.
What a contrast with the appalling inequality laid bare after twelve years of Tory-led governments.
Conservative Governments have left women brutally exposed to the cost of living crisis and the current epidemic of violent crime.
They have slashed support for disabled people and refused to uprate legacy benefits.
They saw how Black, Asian and ethnic minority people were overexposed to the pandemic – only to patronise with claims that structural racism doesn’t even exist.
And they binned their LGBT Action Plan, disbanded their LGBT Advisory Panel, and broke their promise to ban conversion therapy.
Who owns this dreadful record?
You probably missed it – she didn’t seem to notice herself – but the Minister for Women and Equalities for the last three years was… Liz Truss.
A minister so dedicated to women that one of her first acts as Prime Minister was to scrap the dedicated role for women in Cabinet.
A minister so steeped in Conservative failure that she sat on the Tory frontbench for ten long years.
A minister who said nothing about all those Tory scandals – from the golden wallpaper squirrelled into Boris Johnson’s flat, to the suitcases of booze wheeled into Number 10, to the X-rated tractors beamed into the Commons chamber.
We can’t expect change from a continuity Conservative leader.
We can’t expect delivery from someone who’s failed to deliver.
And we can’t expect fairness from someone who’s governed so unfairly.
We can expect all those things from Labour.
To women grafting day and night on incomes £200 less on average today than in 2010, I say: Labour will deliver a fairer future.
To the half a million women waiting for gynaecological treatment, I say: Labour will deliver a fairer future.
To female victims of the Tory epidemic of violence, misogyny and discrimination: Labour will deliver a fairer future.
To the millions of disabled people facing fuel poverty, to the majority of Black children growing up in poverty, to LGBT+ people faced with the surge in homophobic and transphobic hate crime: Labour will deliver a fairer future.
The last Labour Government did more to advance equality than any other in British history. The next will match that record – and we will start with the economy.
We will act to eradicate gender, ethnicity and disability pay gaps.
We will bring in strong family-friendly rights.
We will measure what we do and be accountable for it – equality impact assessing every budget.
And we’ll always – always – treat the British people with dignity and respect.
Respect. A concept this Tory Government will never understand. But one that I will put at the heart of Government as Labour’s first ever Secretary of State for Women and Equalities.
Respect means equalising the law so that all forms of hate crime are treated as aggravated offences.
Respect means modernising the Gender Recognition Act and upholding the Equality Act, including its provision for single-sex exemptions.
Respect means banning all forms of conversion therapy outright while making sure that doesn’t cover psychological support and treatment. Because unlike the Tories, we will never hide behind strawman arguments to avoid doing what’s right.
Respect means working with disabled people, not against them – ending cruel disability assessments and supporting disabled people to live the lives they want and deserve.
And respect means tackling the epidemic of violence against women and girls – with specialist rape units in every police force area, minimum sentences for rape and stalking, and making misogyny a hate crime.
Labour won’t dismiss structural racism – we’ll tackle it head on, with a landmark, new Race Equality Act, by implementing all the Lammy Review recommendations, and with a curriculum that reflects our country’s diverse history and society.
We will never pit communities against each other for cheap political points like the Conservative Party. And unlike the Tories, we will always tackle issues around inequality or prejudice in our own ranks.
The Forde Report made difficult reading for anyone who cherishes our Party and its values. It’s unacceptable that members of our party and party staff, were subject to sexism, misogyny and racism. As Chair of the Labour Party, I want to reiterate the apology that David Evans and Keir Starmer have made.
Over the last two years we’ve acted to change our party:
A new Independent Complaints Process – passed at conference last year – and now in operation as the most robust complaints process of any political party.
New Codes of Conduct against Islamophobia and Afrophobia and Anti-Black Racism. Mandatory training against bias, for staff.
And radical reforms to recruitment.
But that job of work will never be finished – as Chair, I will always act to ensure the Party we love is a safe place for everyone who shares our values.
That is how we prepare our Party for the responsibility of government.
This year was a turning point. This year, we were the only party to win councils in Scotland, England and Wales. We won in the North West, the South East, and Tory-run bastions like Wandsworth and Westminster. After twelve long years in opposition, we are assembling excellent candidates to take the fight to the Tories at every single contest between now and whenever Liz Truss dares to go to the country.
Let’s hope it’s soon, because the country can’t take much more chaos from the Conservative Party. I’ve now seen off four different Tory Party Chairs over the last year. But no matter how much the Conservatives rearrange their Party Chairs, their ship of state is sinking fast.
They’re clapped out. Checked out. It’s high time they cleared out.
Whenever that election is called, I say – bring it on. Because Labour will be ready with the policies we need to change lives.
Over the last year, I’ve learned from brilliant examples of Labour in power – from West Dunbartonshire to Worthing to Wales. They show that Labour works in government – and you can read all about the difference our Labour councillors, MSPs, Senedd members, metro mayors and Police and Crime Commissioners are already making on the Labour Works website – released to conference and the public, today.
As Chair of the Stronger Together policy review, I’ve also worked with Keir, the Shadow Cabinet, our affiliated trade unions and hundreds of you – our members – to develop the ambitious policy agenda that’s in this year’s Stronger Together report, which I am delighted to present to conference today.
No-one who reads this report can doubt that Labour is the party of ideas in British politics. From tackling the cost of living and climate crises to building a stronger, more secure economy to delivering a New Deal for Working People – it shows that Labour is ready to take on the challenges our country faces.
Only Labour can unite our country, clean up our politics, and build a fairer, greener future for Britain. That future is in our grasp. I look forward to joining you on the campaign trail to make it a reality.
Thank you.
The comments made by Anneliese Dodds, the Chair of the Labour Party, on 5 August 2022.
Proof Rishi Sunak and the Tories deliberately funnelled taxpayers’ money to rich parts of the country.
If your school is crumbling, your hospital overflowing or your police station closing, remember who’s to blame.
The comments made by Anneliese Dodds, the Chair of the Labour Party, on 5 May 2022.
We are proud of the positive campaign we have run, based on a practical plan to tackle the cost of living crisis and the crime blighting our communities. Because we believe Britain deserves better.
It’s going to be a long night and there will be ups and downs – we hold the majority of the seats up for election in England, so never expected big gains.
These results will show the progress we have made thanks to Keir’s leadership since the disastrous 2019 election result. Labour is a renewed and confident party, making headway in England, Scotland and Wales.
The comments made by Anneliese Dodds, the Chair of the Labour Party, on 19 November 2021.
It is totally unacceptable that police recorded hate crimes against LGBT+ people have doubled in the last five years. That’s why, on the eve of Transgender Day of Remembrance, Labour is committing to do something to stop it.
All victims of hate crime have a right to expect equal treatment under the law, but that’s not the case today. So Labour will fix this injustice by bringing in tougher, fairer hate crime laws so that every category of hate crime is treated as an aggravated offence – and those who commit hate crimes against LGBT+ and disabled people can no longer get away with softer sentences.
The Conservatives could have done this years ago, but they’ve sat on their hands as usual. There is little wonder that former members of their now defunct LGBT advisory panel have accused ministers of creating a hostile environment for LGBT people.
Labour recognises that trans rights are human rights. So we would update the Gender Recognition Act to enable a process of self-identification while continuing to support the implementation of the Equality Act, including the single sex exemption. We would ban conversion therapies outright immediately. And we would introduce these vital changes to hate crime laws that we’re announcing today.
Equalising hate crime laws is just one way in which Labour would seek to end the Conservatives’ epidemic of violence on our streets. We have set out a wide range of proposals in our Ending Violence Against Women and Girls Green Paper, including sweeping reforms to sentencing and protections for women and girls and treating misogyny as a hate crime.
The Conservative Government is failing our communities on every front. Only Labour has a plan to make them safer.
The comments made by Anneliese Dodds, the Chair of the Labour Party, on 6 November 2021.
It’s now clear that the cash for access culture at the heart of this Conservative government stems from the top and reaches through every sinew of the Prime Minister’s party.
This stench of sleaze emanating from Boris Johnson’s government grows by the day, with even a former Conservative prime minister calling his administration ‘politically corrupt’.
Labour would stamp out sleaze, with a tougher system to restore the public’s faith in our democracy and political system.
The comments made by Anneliese Dodds, the Chair of the Labour Party, on 6 October 2021.
Boris Johnson’s vacuous speech summed up this whole Conservative conference. The PM talked more about beavers than he did about action to tackle the multiple crises facing working people up and down the country.
Far from getting a grip on the spiralling costs of energy, fuel and food, the Tories are actively making things worse – cutting incomes today for six million families by over £1,000 a year.
Britain deserves a fairer, greener and more secure future. Last week Labour set out how we can get there. This week it’s clear that after over a decade in power the Conservatives don’t have a clue.