Labour says it has completed 154 of the 165 recommendations made by the Forde Inquiry and decided not to adopt the other 11. That status is the party's own. Some of the 154 were already in place when the report arrived, and others were delivered through reforms that followed the Equality and Human Rights Commission's investigation into antisemitism.
Labour's National Executive Committee set up the inquiry, chaired by Martin Forde KC, in 2020 after an internal report on the party's handling of antisemitism complaints from 2014 to 2019 was leaked. The panel received more than 1,100 submissions and delivered its report on 19 July 2022.
What Forde found
During the 2017 general election, a handful of headquarters staff working from Ergon House used budget code GEL001 to fund campaigns supporting sitting MPs, largely on the right of the party and none of them Jeremy Corbyn supporters. A campaign budget from 12 June 2017 recorded just over £92,000 spent and just over £42,000 committed, some £135,000 in total.
Forde found the operation was set up covertly "without authority of the Campaign Committee" and that staff "deliberately sought to obscure the nature of the spending" from the leader's office. It was, the report said, "simply wrong". But it did not find sabotage: the defensive strategy was "objectively defensible", and it was "highly unlikely" the operation lost Labour the election. The report said a forensic accounting exercise beyond its scope would be needed to establish how all the GEL001 money was used.
On discrimination, 45 of the 68 submissions from current or former staff described experiencing or witnessing discriminatory behaviour in party workplaces. In a June 2020 survey by the GMB union, 54 per cent of staff respondents reported encountering discrimination while working for the party. The report said these were not a comprehensive analysis.
Submissions described "a perceived hierarchy" in which, because antisemitism cases had become part of the factional conflict, other forms of racism and discrimination were "being ignored". The report recorded these as concerns raised with it. Labour's own summary says the report urges the party to treat all forms of discrimination with equal seriousness.
Forde also found recruitment had been too informal and open to factional influence, and that staff training, development and wellbeing had not been given enough priority.
What Labour reports it changed
After publication, the NEC, the then general secretary David Evans and the then leader Keir Starmer apologised for the culture and attitudes the report described. An NEC working group took on the recommendations. The NEC was told in November 2023 that 154 were complete and 11 would not be progressed, and received its final update in January 2024.
Labour sorts the 154 into four groups: in place before the report was received, completed under the EHRC process, completed by staff teams, and completed by the NEC working group. It lists a new staff code of conduct and social media code, a Member's Pledge and Leadership Code, changes to recruitment, better diversity data, mandatory training, and two independent complaint boards to verify NEC disciplinary decisions and hear cases. It says it has increased the proportion of ethnic minority staff and the number of women in leadership roles, without publishing the figures on that page.
Among the 11 recommendations not adopted, Labour rejected anonymous "blind recruitment", saying it goes further by training staff and recruitment panels in unconscious bias, and rejected asking party staff to be politically impartial like civil servants, which it said was not a reasonable "ask" for a political party.
Forde was still concerned about the recommendations Labour had not adopted. In January 2024 he told Sky News he was "actively pursuing an invitation" to meet the party's working group about them. Sky's report did not say whether that meeting took place.
Sky also reported criticism from Black Labour MPs. Two, speaking anonymously, were frustrated with the party's response: one accused the leadership of trying to bury the findings, and another described growing disillusionment among Black and minority ethnic communities. These were the MPs' criticisms, not findings that Labour had suppressed the report.
Labour told Sky it was not failing to act. It pointed to reforms of its complaints procedures, codes of conduct on Islamophobia and anti-Black racism, funding for a Black leadership programme and continued engagement with Forde, and said it had implemented most recommendations, including some completed before the report was published, with further work continuing.
What has not been published
Labour's implementation record sets out what it did. It does not include evidence on whether discrimination complaints are now handled fairly and consistently, how staff experience the party as an employer, or whether recruitment is less exposed to factional influence. The Equality and Human Rights Commission ended its monitoring of Labour's antisemitism action plan in February 2023.
Labour says completing the action plan "does not mark an end to improvements" and that the NEC keeps oversight. Its 2026 annual report refers to a Staff Diversity and Inclusion Board and continuing collection of staff equality data, but not to the Forde Report. We found no independent assessment of the Forde reforms published since January 2024, though we cannot rule one out.