Labour to end the automatic enrolment of union members Lord Whitty, a former Labour general secretary, turned down Mr Miliband's offer for him to lead the reforms because he was said to believe they could not be delivered. The Labour leader faced criticism for appointing Lord Collins of Highbury, a founder of Unite, to lead negotiations with the unions on the reforms. Police are investigating claims that Unite, the biggest trade union, tried to pack the Falkirk Labour party with its members to ensure that its preferred candidate was chosen to fight the next election. The union denies the allegations and last week attacked the Labour leader for smearing its members. In a speech at the St Bride Foundation in London yesterday, Mr Miliband told party members that he wanted to build "a better Labour Party" and "a better politics for Britain" and promised the reforms would be delivered before the next election in 2015. "Every time something like Falkirk happens, it confirms people's worst suspicions," he said. We are going to take action and we are going to seize the moment that Falkirk represents. He said he wanted to abolish the automatic enrolment of three million union members into the party and to open up the selection of Labour candidates to the general public by adopting an American-style system of "primaries." However, Labour sources admitted that abolishing the automatic enrolment of union members into the party could concentrate more money in the hands of the union bosses. Workers will still be asked to pay the same amount towards their union's "political fund" under the plan. But instead of a proportion being directly allocated to Labour, it will in future sit in the union's bank account ready to be spent according to the decisions of the union's leadership.