The Labour Party National Executive Committee (NEC) did not agree a rules “package” for conference as was previously believed, as sources from the NEC claim that no decision was taken to submit the NEC’s rule changes as a single item.

Sources claim that at the nine-hour NEC meeting before conference, a range of rule changes were agreed on from various working groups led by NEC members Alice Perry, Ann Black and Tom Watson. These included the controversial proposal to add two NEC members appointed by the Welsh and Scottish Labour leaders. Yet the idea of submitting them as a ‘package’ was supposedly never mentioned.

Instead, the NEC agreed a document that set out sixteen separate rule changes. The document allegedly contained no mention that the rule changes would be voted on as a whole.

The document was then taken to the Conference Arrangements Committee (CAC) and presented as an agreed NEC document. A member of staff then reportedly stated that it had been agreed that there would only be one vote on the package. The CAC then took this as a given, and thus the first CAC report of conference included the controversial and potentially unprecedented decision that all NEC rule changes would be voted on as one.

Delegates attempted to challenge this from the floor, with general secretaries, National Policy Forum members, Young Labour delegates and members of the NEC moving a reference back on the matter each morning of conference. The Chair declined these requests leading to accusations that party officials were allowing the NEC to be “gerrymandered”.

The only times conference has ever voted on multiple rule changes as a single item has been at the Special Conference for the Collins Review, where three rule changes were voted through, and in previous years when entirely new rulebooks have been adopted.

These revelations cast further light on the shady and underhand way in which decisions are made in the Labour Party, and the importance of both party staff and the CAC. A new CAC is due to be elected in 2017.