Unions debate plan for links with Tories

Trade unions will debate plans to develop formal links with the Tories and Liberal Democrats next month as cash-strapped Labour chiefs struggle to keep their biggest contributors on board.

Labour has asked the unions to stump up the cash to pay off the £5.5m mortgage on its new headquarters. The huge amalgamated union Amicus-AEEU has pledged to contribute, and other major unions, including Unison, the GMB, the RMT and the T&G, are understood to be considering the deal.

But tension between the unions and Labour over strikes, public sector pay and conditions and the Prime Minister's position on Iraq is fuelling calls for an end to the historic link with Labour.

The TUC conference in Blackpool is expected to consider a motion from the Public and Commercial Services Union urging union members to develop formal ties with the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats to maintain "influence" with whoever is in government. It calls for a working group to "open a dialogue" and report back next year.

A debate is scheduled to be held in the morning before Tony Blair makes his keynote speech to the conference.

A union source said yesterday that some members were "adamant" that Labour had to be made to understand that it had "no monopoly" on contacts with the unions.

"Where we disagree with the Labour Party and find ourselves closer to other parties, we are quite happy to run campaigns alongside them," the source said.

Charles Kennedy, the Liberal Democrat leader, will be the first non-Labour leader to address the TUC conference when it is held next month. But Labour is determined to maintain its ties with the unions, especially given its financial dependence on them.

The move from Millbank Tower to the new HQ in Old Queen Street, Westminster, which Labour will move into within a fortnight, is expected to save the party about £400,000 a year in rent.

The decision to involve the unions as stakeholders in the property comes at a time when the party, as revealed in The Independent on Sunday, has debts of £6m and a further £2m in unpaid bills.

Last week's electoral commission report disclosed that Labour's donations had fallen from £3,379,641 in the first quarter of 2002 to £591,052 in the three months to June.

After a recent meeting with David Triesman, Labour's general secretary, the unions agreed to an emergency payment of £100,000 to ease the party's finances.

Now, some unions are attempting to convince their members to join the Labour Party to boost its funding. A spokesman for the T&G said: "We would want to see a very much more robust attitude towards recruiting trade unionists into the Labour Party. It is an individual decision for people to join a political party, but we believe that encouraging members to join the party is something that would strengthen the hand of the Labour Party as well as the trade union movement."

In October, Labour's annual conference in Blackpool will vote on a motion to raise membership fees in an attempt to raise £1m.

The party's ruling national executive committee is proposing that the unwaged rate should go up from £7 to £12 a year and full membership from £18.50 to £24.