The 2026 NEC elections are a vital juncture for members to regain control of their union from Left Unity and the bureaucracy; the Independent Left is part of the Coalition for Change electoral alliance which is fighting to make this happen by delivering its programme.

For 2026 we need a new President and NEC that will undertake the dual tasks of leadership; to listen and to lead. The President of PCS should not exercise dictatorial powers, no matter who they are or what faction they are from. Bev Laidlaw of the Independent Left is the Presidential candidate for the Coalition for Change. Bev has a longstanding record against the increasing role of the bureaucracy in the union and understands how to listen to members and reps to help to transform it alongside us all.

A Coalition-led NEC will begin the process of refounding PCS by improving its democracy, communication and the power and resources that reps and members have to deliver change on the ground, ending the monopoly of power by unelected staffers. If PCS is to thrive, it must be genuinely democratic, drawing on members and reps’ knowledge and giving them the tools and resources to build successful industrial campaigns and deliver wins. A transformed rank and file led union will fight on jobs, terms and conditions and pay, overturning long-term decline by the LU leadership.

In the last year most members have seen their pay fall when compared to inflation. Low pay remains endemic and our lowest paid members are routinely overtaken by the National Minimum Wage rise each April.

At the Annual Delegate Conference in May last year, your delegates passed motions to build a national campaign to fight the Government for fair pay and wider terms and conditions changes, with the aim of moving to an industrial action ballot in September.

Since the election of a Left Unity-majority NEC and re-election of Martin Cavanagh as President, we have seen an abdication of leadership by our elected officials and the employed bureaucracy, seemingly singularly directed by Fran Heathcote, the General Secretary.

The union effectively demobilised over the summer, did ineffectual choreographed engagement with Group and Branch representatives and concluded in September not to proceed to ballot members to advance the national campaign.

They ran down the Fighting Fund by blocking motions last year to increase contributions and by processing their irresponsible ‘levy refund’. They did not launch a true national campaign this year because they actively eroded the conditions to have one. All the while, they announce the (lack of) outcomes from their meetings with the Cabinet Office even though there has been no material progress.

Beyond pay, the leadership have been ineffective in stemming increasing workloads, the erosion of hybrid working, fighting unilateral rota changes by management, opposing office closures, tackling the rising threat of AI to civil service jobs and the deliberate attack by the government on London-based civil service jobs in particular through Places for Growth and the Plan for London. Can any PCS member say that the current union leadership has done them proud on these urgent issues?

A Coalition for Change-led NEC will build momentum towards a coordinated industrial fight, including national and selective strikes, and action short of strikes, to force the government to concede members’ legitimate demands on pay, pensions and jobs, but also to secure genuine freedom and flexibility for our members in how and where we do our work. We will fight to put equality at the heart of everything PCS does and support reps and members with discrimination cases.

This is just a small part of the programme we will deliver if we are elected, read more about our joint platform in full and vote for the Independent Left and Coalition for Change candidates! And if you want to help shape our work to change PCS, consider joining the IL for just £3 per month.

In the Independent Left we know that rights for trade union members and reps aren’t just given by management, they’re fought for and won. In the IL we believe there is a need to refound PCS from the top to the bottom, to make it more democratic and put power in the hands of members and reps rather than unelected officials. 

HMRC plays a crucial role in developing a national campaign worthy of the name on pay, job security and pensions and we will seek to build our strength to deliver that, for too long we have been passive in the fightback against the employer. 

We must also be part of a co-ordinated, cross-Civil Service drive on new and emerging campaigns about how and where we work, so we can fight for a workplace that gives us power to do Our Work, Our Way, whether that is about pushing back against rigid office attendance policies or about preventing unilateral management rota changes. There are industrial Our Work Our Way campaigns happening across the Civil Service, with industrial action and action short of strike, and it is time HMRC prepared itself to join this fight. 

On HMRC-specific issues, on the GEC we would seek to:

1. From Fear to Fighting- Building a Better Branch Culture 

Access Agreements for Reps and Members – The Employment Rights Act has created ‘Access Agreements’ for unions in workplaces and this provides a generational opportunity to change the toxic anti-union culture within HMRC and, by fighting for the right Agreement, allow reps to communicate with members on employer systems and map their branch density without undue management interference. We will also push to create a guidance document so reps and members know what is and isn’t suitable for Government systems. Other reps in Civil Service employers have these rights, it’s time for us to insist on the same.

Back to basics political education – To build a better culture, it needs to start with members on day one of their membership. We will push to create starter packs for members, to be sent when they join, with the aim of tweaking the mindsets of new starters to believe they deserve better. We will also pressure HR to provide a list of new starters to BECs, so they may be contacted by reps in their area and encouraged to join. In addition, we want to revamp the Business Trade Union Side structures to be member-led and grassroots, moving away from a liaison model and more to coordinating collective action in a business area.

End Toxic Management– In areas like parts of Customer Services Group where there are bullying managers and toxic environments, we will fight for members to be protected and for reps to organise against these managers with guidance on tactics and strategies for reps to use. All staff should feel empowered to push back on unreasonable demands from above.

For a Development-led P&D System– Other parts of the Civil Service have P&D systems which are development led, they are based on identifying skills gaps and working out how to help them develop their careers and skills, not based around narrow performance criteria and using Performance Improvement Plans as a fast track to dismissal. We must develop a campaign in HMRC based around pushing management to implement a Model P&D Policy that we develop and end the rigid performance management focus of P&D. 

2. Improving Agitational and Industrial Strength 

Multi-Employer Building Organising– Create a plan to ensure branch details of BECs are shared between those in the same workplaces and local areas to enable local organising and mobilising to support national union policy. Support the establishment of joint Health and Safety Committees to help deliver this in the short term, before wider union policy change.

End Strike Breaking– organise within the Surge and Rapid Response Team to prevent this in-house contingent labour being used to break strikes through political education and organisation of these workers.

Insource FM workers – build a campaign to insource FM workers, starting by improving relations with FM staff in buildings and encouraging reps to represent FM staff even if in their own time. Identify potential FM reps and build a campaign to win.

3. Creating a Member-led Group

Branch Mergers – Members need to be involved in the decisions that impact them. If HMRC Group or PCS National believe changes to branch structures would be beneficial; the branches themselves, who are best placed to understand the impact of such changes, should be meaningfully consulted and their views considered when decisions are made. Fostering our members’ sense of ownership of their branch is crucial to the lifeblood of our union.

VOA merger, not a hostile takeover – ensure a thorough comparison of T&Cs for HMRC and VOA takes place and the optimised policies for workers are implemented- we must see upwards harmonisation with thorough comparison and a fight for change, not enable the merger to result in a race to the bottom. 

In the IL we are happy to work with any member, rep, faction or group who is committed to delivering our programme and shares in our wider aims. If elected, we will build a stronger PCS within HMRC and hope you will support us in this fight.

Our IL candidates are: 

Rose Baker (R&C PCS Croydon Regional Centre Branch)

Fi Weldin (R&C PCS Croydon Regional Centre Branch)

and other candidates who support our aims. 

President

1. Bev Laidlaw (DWP)

Vice-Presidents

1. Ellie Clarke (CO)
2. Rachel Heemskerk (DWP)
3. Dave Semple (DfE)
4. Hector Wesley (HMRC)

NEC

1. Eilonwy Awen (HMRC)
2. Fiona Brittle (Scottish Government)
3. Josh Chown (Home Office)
4. Abi Clark (DWP)
5. Ellie Clarke (Cabinet Office)
6. Gemma Criddle (HMRC)  
7. Joe Dale (MHCLG)
8. Chris Day (National Archives)
9. Pippa Evans (House of Commons)
10. Angie Foggett (HMRC)
11. Andrew Fry (Scottish Government)
12. Christian Goulart McNerney (Ofgem)
13. Chip Hamer (Sport England)
14. James Hawthorne (Ofwat)
15. Rachel Heemskerk (DWP)
16. Craig Hodgson (DWP)
17. Reece Lawton (DWP)
18. Bev Laidlaw (DWP)
19. Vijay Menezes-Jackson (DWP Edinburgh, Lothian and Borders)
20. Liat Norris (MOJ
21. Puck Oseroff-Spicer (Security Industry Authority)
22. Rob Ritchie (Commercial Sector)
23. Jon-Paul Rosser (HMRC)
24. Dave Semple (Dept for Education)
25. H Sheridan (HMRC)
26. Pete Smullen (HMRC)
27. Gary Spencer-Guney (MHCLG)
28. Hector Wesley (HMRC)
29. Katrine Williams (DWP)
30. Bobby Young (HMRC)

The PCS Coalition for Change is an alliance comprising PCS Independent Left, PCS Broad Left Network, the Alliance for Change and PCS Rank and File Network, who seek to elect a union leadership who take seriously the challenge of building a fighting, democratic PCS to defeat austerity and halt the attack on our jobs and public services. If elected, we will carry out the following programme:

For a fighting union

Building a National Campaign on Pay, Jobs and Hybrid Working

Since May 2025, and the election of the current NEC, most members have seen their pay fall when compared to inflation. Low pay remains endemic across Westminster and devolved civil services and amongst our private sector members, and our lowest paid members are routinely overtaken by the National Minimum Wage rise each April. This is disgraceful.

If elected, we will fight for an immediate 10% pay rise and to end low pay, as part of a strategy to deliver above inflation pay restoration over time. We will fight to restore national pay bargaining and end multi-tier pay and terms and conditions by harmonising all pay and terms and conditions upwards. We will fight to reverse major detrimental changes to our contractual rights, on pensions, sick pay, annual leave and other rights.

Pay and contractual rights are not the only issues facing members, however. Tens of thousands of job cuts across Westminster departments have been announced – while the incumbent NEC does nothing to coordinate opposition to these major job losses.

The current PCS leadership under Martin Cavanagh, Fran Heathcote and PCS Left Unity (LU) have been ineffective in stemming increasing workloads, the erosion of hybrid working, fighting unilateral rota changes by management, opposing office closures, tackling the rising threat of AI to civil service jobs and the deliberate attack by the government on London-based civil service jobs through Places for Growth.

To take on and defeat the government and employers on all of these issues, we will make the building of a coordinated, national campaign our top priority if elected – not just in the UK civil service, but in the devolved Scottish and Welsh civil service and in privatised areas too.

We will build on important Group and Branch disputes to develop a co-ordinated approach to these issues, as opposed to leaving these disputes to languish in isolation, which is the current approach of the LU-led NEC. A Coalition for Change-led NEC will build momentum towards a coordinated industrial fight, including national and selective strikes, and action short of strikes, to force the government to concede members’ legitimate demands on pay, pensions and jobs, but also to secure genuine freedom and flexibility for our members in how and where we do our work.

A Serious Approach to Union Organising

Branches and Groups must have resources placed at their disposal to ensure they are leading the charge to recruit the estimated three hundred thousand non-unionised civil servants and privatised workers on central government contracts into PCS. From streamlined processes to produce group, branch and workplace-specific leaflets, to the ability right down to branch and workplace level for elected reps to contact members directly, putting the power to recruit and organise members directly into the hands of branches and groups is a crucial step in building an organising revolution in PCS and overcoming years of barriers put up by employers.

A Sustainable Fighting Fund

We are committed to building a sustainable and robust fighting fund from within members’ subscriptions to meet our strike action requirements as soon as possible, to avoid an overreliance on temporary levies, which would be reserved for exceptional circumstances.

For a democratic union

Restoring Union Democracy

A Coalition-led NEC will develop the necessary changes to restore members’ faith in the structures of our union through an open process of member and activist engagement. This would minimally look to consult deeply on how we can increase the accountability of currently unelected employed officials to lay members and reps, the accountability of the General Secretary and President to the NEC and empower branches, regional committees and Groups. It would also consult members and reps on how we can make our elections more accessible and democratic. It must also explore how we can give timely and informative reports to members on key bargaining issues to improve accountability and the ability of members to inform and shape negotiations.

The President of PCS should not exercise dictatorial powers, no matter who they are or what faction they are from. The President and General Secretary must both be subject to the NEC elected by members. We will bring forth rule changes that limit the power of the President to frustrate campaigns agreed by the union’s Conference and by the democratically elected NEC, and which enhance the accountability of the union’s General Secretary to the elected NEC. For 2026 we need a new President and NEC that will undertake the dual tasks of leadership; to listen and to lead. A leadership that won’t be satisfied by “winning” talks with the Cabinet Office that result in no concrete gains, but whose desire is to deliver real results for members.

Empowering PCS Nations, Regions and Groups

The allocation of full-time officers to bargaining and organising at devolved nation, Region and Group level, what they achieve and how they can be most effective goes entirely unscrutinised by any elected committee within PCS. This must change. PCS officials must be accountable to the elected devolved nation, Region and Group committees. Lay rep committees who seek to carry out effective organising and campaigning activity in line with union policy, they must be able to do so without blocking  from officials. We must prevent the bureaucracy from restricting their ability to effectively campaign or directly contact branches. All full-time officials with bargaining responsibilities should be elected.

All areas, particularly those which are currently underserved, such as Met Police, Culture Group and facilities management and commercial sector, should be adequately resourced to support effective bargaining and organising. Every area must be empowered to keep members fully informed and to involve members in shaping the union’s approach to negotiations. Wages of PCS full-time officials should be brought into line with the wages of union members; salaries over £100,000p.a. are not acceptable.

Reforming Legal Services

Every member and branch asking for legal advice should get that advice in a timely way. Groups and National branches needing legal advice and help for industrial relations reasons should get such advice and help. We will conduct a comprehensive review of legal services undertaken by the NEC in full consultation with representatives and members and with a view to substantially improving the support to representatives and members.

For Solidarity

Equality and Discrimination

We will fight to put equality at the heart of everything PCS does. We will fight to halt all discrimination in pay, terms & conditions, and employer policies, and root out harassment and bullying in all workplaces. We will insist on equality impact assessment prior to, and post implementation of, all employer proposals. We will make sure PCS gives full support for reps to build anti-discrimination cases and campaigns from the ground up.

We must centre trans liberation as a matter where the union must lead in society and not follow the most reactionary trends out of cowardice. Since the For Women Scotland v Scottish Ministers Supreme Court judgment we have seen an increase in harassment and attempts to limit trans peoples’ access to public life. Last year, the leadership of the union sent trans delegates to ADC an incendiary plea not to use the toilets they were used to using then shut down Conference debates on trans rights motions; this must never happen again.

We will give our unequivocal support to calls for whatever legislative changes are needed to protect our trans and non-binary members from discrimination and harm and will consider how strategic legal cases can be taken to defend inclusive policies and practices in our workplaces.

Jobs & Homes, Not Racism: PCS Political Campaigns and Defeating the Far Right

We proactively support grassroots anti-racist and anti-fascist initiatives, cooperating at all levels with other organisations that seek to mobilise workers against the division and defeat that far right policies bring. We will seek to directly involve PCS members in the battle to unite communities against the despair that comes with the austerity agenda promulgated by the main political parties, behind common demands for jobs, homes and high-quality, well-funded, properly staffed public services for all.

We will fight to repeal the anti-trade union legislation, to win support for key political demands such as sectoral collective bargaining and mandatory union recognition in government procurement, and to oppose all public sector cuts. We campaign for energy democracy, a National Climate Service, tax justice, a universal social security net run in the interests of staff and claimants and for disability rights. We support strong links with tenants’ rights organisations.

Government Digital and Data Profession Capability Framework (Formerly DDaT)

Nearly one in twenty staff in the UK civil service are IT specialists of one sort or another. Many of these are on what used to be called the Digital, Data and Technology (DDAT) framework. Yet the General Secretary has not worked up a DDAT pay claim nor sought to organise Digital workers. If we win, that will change, and the union will properly organise Digital workers.

We in the Independent Left have committed to a long term goal of ‘Refounding PCS’. This means we will seek to take forward radical changes to the constitution of PCS that will return control of the union to its members via elected democratic structures.

In this article, we set out why such a refounding is needed, and how we will seek to do it.

The case for constitutional change

Many PCS activists and members – especially but not exclusively those who have been around long enough to remember the battles with the right in the first half decade of the union’s existence – have a sense of our union being different to the other big unions. We are a lay-led union, we tell ourselves, with every senior elected national officer in the union’s history coming directly from the shop floor. We are an organising union who care more about building our industrial strength than hobnobbing with the labour (and Labour) aristocracy. And we are a democratic union, with our annual delegate conference and annual all-out NEC elections.

We take pride in these ideals – but in reality, they are on life support.

The union remains lay-led in theory but in practice the direction of the union is set less and less by our elected NEC and more by a small group of unelected full time officials surrounding the general secretary. Information of critical importance is not disclosed to NEC members or to the Assistant General Secretary and activists are left to put together the pieces of whatever information does slip out.

The notion that PCS is an organising union is not borne out by reality. PCS has for many years now been a minority union, and our actions have too often betrayed our weakness rather than shown what strength we do have. Our national campaign has been run into the ground year after year by a leadership that sees member apathy as part of the PCS furniture rather than something that they are responsible for shifting. The organising vision of PCS’s Left Unity leadership received the ultimate rebuke at 2024 Annual Delegate Conference when the union’s proposed Organising Strategy was voted down by conference delegates.

Finally, PCS’s democratic processes and culture are under serious strain. We still elect our NEC annually, and our annual delegate conference can still make the leadership squirm. But, increasingly, the Left Unity leadership have been able to ignore the clearly expressed will of members at little procedural cost. To give a few examples:

1) PCS conference year in, year out passes policy that endorses trans and non-binary liberation and seeks to put PCS front and centre of the global fight against transphobia. Yet this clearly expressed will of members is systematically ignored by the union’s Left Unity leadership, which refuses to be transparent on its discussions with the Cabinet Office on trans and non-binary inclusion in the civil service, and has sought to override and interfere with the operation of the PCS Proud network. Most shamefully, in 2025 conference delegates were not even allowed to see pro-trans equality motions, let alone vote on them.

2) The union’s Left Unity leadership have again and again stood in the way of constitutionally sound attempts to revive our national campaign. The President repeatedly used his veto to prevent the 2024-25 Coalition for Change majority from having motions on the national campaign heard at the NEC. After many branches submitted calls for a Special Delegate Conference to unblock the issue, rather than taking these concerns seriously, the General Secretary took reprisal action against the branches involved, writing a ticking off letter to members. The number of branches who had submitted calls for an SDC was never released, and it is unclear whether the threshold for triggering an SDC was actually met. In any case, the personal role that the General Secretary was able to play in the process ran counter to the original purpose of a special delegate conference, which is to provide a check and balance against leadership between ADCs.

3) Regional and group decision-making should be a building block in our union’s democracy, but these structures have too often been overruled or ignored by national PCS leadership. The general secretary has imposed changes to group compositions with little if any engagement with the groups and branches affected. At regional level too, the general secretary has prevented regional committees – and especially the London and South East regional committee – from carrying out important organising and political work.

The damning fact is that PCS members in increasing numbers have decided that democratic engagement is not worth the effort: a mere 6.4% of members voted in the last NEC elections.

For all these reasons and many more, we in the Independent Left believe that change is needed.

What is the solution?

One way of addressing these issues is to simply replace the current leadership, by winning national NEC elections (including the Presidency) in 2026 and beyond, and the next General Secretary election in 2028. Independent Left will campaign for this change in leadership, and seek to put in place union leaders who will respect the constitution and not seek every possible loophole to overrule the will of members.

But simply changing the leadership is insufficient, for a number of reasons. Firstly, respecting the will of members should not be a question that is up for debate every election time – it should be a foundational tenet for the union. Secondly, we are clear-eyed enough to know that even the most principled wielders of power require checks and balances in order to prevent bureaucratic backsliding. And thirdly, because the core underlying challenge that our union’s democracy faces – that the power balance between the bureaucracy and lay members and reps is all wrong – cannot be solved by change of leadership alone.

What PCS needs – and what the Independent Left is committed to seeking – is a comprehensive revision of our constitution and standing orders to ensure that in future, it will be members that control our union.

What will it take to refound PCS?

We call this process ‘refounding PCS’. This is because such changes would not involve marginal dry tweaks to a few PDFs, but a substantive reimagining of what our union’s constitutional settlement should be.

Such a process would represent a genuine ‘refounding’ of our union – taking the old values of lay control, organising, and democracy, and creating new constitutional arrangements that will make them real at every level of our organisation.

We can imagine the types of changes that could be pursued through this process:

– Increasing the NEC’s role in supervising the deployment of union resources, including staffing structures and transparency of legal advice

– Improving transparency of NEC meetings, with clearer records and fewer gags of NEC members on discussing non-sensitive matters

– Better record keeping of historical conference and NEC decisions and accountability mechanisms for ensuring they are delivered

– Increasing the number of senior union officer posts that are subject to election by members

– Greater rep access to member data and communications, improve our organising ability, unmediated by PCS bureaucracy

– Giving group and regional committees more control over resources and activities, and a formal say over restructures

– Changing the standing orders of the national executive committee to ensure that Presidents cannot unreasonably override the will of a majority of elected NEC members

– Improving the way that national elections are conducted, including arrangements for regional hustings and nominations

This is a non-exhaustive list of objectives and any process of refounding our union would need to gather views and input from across members and activists to ensure we seize the full opportunity for democratic revitalisation that such an initiative presents. Something like a constitutional convention- where an ad hoc committee made up of a representative cross-section of reps and lay members is brought together to develop proposals- may be required in order to bring different ideas together. The Independent Left welcomes views from all members of the union on further outcomes that we might seek to achieve from the process of refounding our union.

Delivering such objectives is likely to involve a range of interventions, including conference motions (most requiring 2/3 majority support), changes to NEC standing orders, and potentially all-membership ballots. This is going to be a long haul process, which reps and activists will need to bring members along with.

For this very reason we have adopted Refounding PCS as a campaigning priority. We will not win the changes we need through the back door, or with a general aye at a single conference – but through an active campaign that explains to members why democracy matters, why it is in peril in our union, and what we are going to do about it.

So we will be not only considering what motions we can bring to this and future ADCs to give effect to our aims, but also speaking directly to members in our branches about the union they want to build in the long term, and the role that they can play in delivering it. We encourage other branches to do likewise through discussions at all member meetings.

Our union’s democracy has been circling the drain for too long. The Independent Left calls on all members, reps and activists to support us in Refounding PCS and building a better union.