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| GMB cuts funds it gives Labour from £1.2m to £150,000 | GMB cuts funds it gives Labour from £1.2m to £150,000 |
| (35 minutes later) | |
| The GMB union is to cut the affiliation funds it gives Labour from £1.2m to £150,000 in the wake of a row over reforms, the union has announced. | |
| The union said there would also be cuts in spending on Labour campaigns. | |
| The changes will take effect from the start of next year. | |
| The move comes ahead of Ed Miliband's move to reform union funding so individual union members have to opt in to support the party, rather than being automatically affiliated. | |
| The GMB says the reduction in funding reflects its estimate of the number of union members who would be willing to individually affiliate themselves to the Labour Party. | |
| At the moment the union affiliates 420,000 of its members to Labour, at £3 per member per year, | |
| It estimates about 50,000 of the 650,000 GMB members would actually choose to affiliate with Labour. | |
| The GMB says this figure is derived from the number who took part in the Labour leadership contest in 2010. | |
| 'Lack of understanding' | |
| The move comes despite Mr Miliband's plea to unions to campaign to get their members to sign up. | |
| A GMB source said the idea many more union members might to choose to join the Labour Party was "fantasy land... dream on". | |
| A GMB statement "expressed considerable regret about the apparent lack of understanding the proposal mooted by Ed Miliband will have on the collective nature of trade union engagement with the Labour Party". | |
| It said a further source "of considerable regret... is that the party that had been formed to represent the interest of working people in this country intends to end collective engagement of trade unions in the party they helped to form". | |
| BBC chief political correspondent Norman Smith said the union hopes the pre-emptive move will help protect their political fund, which members are due to be balloted on next year. | |
| The concern was that if GMB members felt the union was still giving large sums of money to the Labour Party they might vote to scrap the political fund altogether. | |
| The political fund is used for broader campaigning issues. |