'Boy' George Osborne: Trident costs to come from Defence budget

George Osborne delivered a rebuke to the defence secretary, Liam Fox, when he declared that the costs of Britain's new Trident nuclear deterrent will come from the main defence budget.

In a sign of the Tory's leadership's growing impatience with Fox, who has embarked on what Downing Street sources have dubbed as "freelance" missions, the chancellor said there could be no special accountancy exemptions for the defence budget.

Speaking to Bloomberg in New Delhi, Osborne said: "The Trident costs, I have made it absolutely clear, are part of the defence budget. All budgets have pressure. I don't think there's anything particularly unique about the ministry of defence. I have made it very clear that Trident renewal costs must be taken as part of the defence budget."

The chancellor's blunt remarks will be seen as something of a reprimand for Fox who complained recently that his department was being asked to pay the £20bn costs of replacing Trident. Fox believes that the costs of replacing Trident should come directly from the Treasury because Britain's continuous-at-sea defence is a matter of national security.
Read More Here

This will come as a blow to those who were optimistic in the fact that the MoD as a department was only being asked to find 20-25% savings over the coming years compared to 30-40% in most other departments. When Trident is factored in (£1 to £2 billion a year) and the suggestion that all the MoD's savings will come from non-service areas... it seems likely that MoD civil servants might well face real cuts of between 30 & 40% over the coming two or three years!

Civil servants 'treading water' with no job to do

- because it's too expensive to make them redundant! Read More Here


Mr Maude told the Public Administration Select Committee that current arrangements make it 'prohibitively expensive' to offer redundancy to some civil servants, leaving them 'in limbo'. 'In most departments there are people for whom there is no job,’ he said.

Francis Maude you will remember famously claimed almost £35,000 in two years for mortgage interest payments on a London flat when he owned a house just a few hundred yards away. He owned the house outright but in 2006 took out a £345,000 mortgage on the flat about one minute’s walk away. He then rented out the house and began claiming mortgage interest payments on the flat which is in a grade II listed building with a gym and 24-hour concierge.

Mr Maude also claimed, and was paid, £387.50 for the cost of moving his effects down the road from the house to the flat.

He claimed £18,112.50 in mortgage interest payments for the year 2006-07, £1,790 for council tax, £2,237 for a service charge and £820 for cleaning.

A further £9,801.78 was claimed for mortgage interest payments from April 1 to Aug 31, 2007.
The senior Tory MP then submitted a claim for the mortgage interest payments for the remainder of the 2007-08 financial year, which came to £13,070.96.

In a note to the House of Commons fees office he said he knew there was not enough left in his ACA account to cover the payments.

The fees office paid out £6,748.52, up to the maximum of his allowance.

The 55-year-old MP is independently wealthy. He was previously a managing director of Morgan Stanley, a director of Salomon Brothers and a non-executive director of Asda during the 1990s.

Source

Quangos a go-go

David Cameron vowed in opposition to rein in Britain's quango state in an attack on a bloated public sector.

His threatened cull of taxpayer-funded organisations yesterday became reality for thousands of workers as the Health Secretary, Andrew Lansley, announced that half of the "arms-length bodies" run by his department were to be abolished.

The move to scrap such quangos as the Health Protection Agency provoked anger among nurses and doctors' organisations, which warned that public wellbeing would suffer as a result.

To date, the coalition Government has axed at least 80 quangos and warned many others that they faced mergers or deep cuts.

All of these will result in job losses across the country and could have huge impacts upon public health, welfare and culture.

ABOLISHED SO FAR

ARTS
*UK Film Council
*Museums, Libraries and Archives Council
*Advisory Council on Libraries
*Legal Deposit Advisory Panel
*Advisory Committee on Historic Wreck S ites

HEALTH
*Health Protection Agency (HPA)
*National Patient Safety Agency (NPSA)
*National Treatment Agency for Substance Misuse
*Alcohol Education and Research Council
*Appointments Commission (CQC)
*Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (by end of this Parliament)
*Human Tissue Authority
*Council for Healthcare Regulatory Excellence (to be made a self-funding body by charging a levy on regulators)
*NHS Institute for Innovation and Improvement

EDUCATION
*General Teaching Council
*Qualifications and Curriculum Development Agency
*British Educational Communications and Technology Agency (BECTA)

BUSINESS AND ECONOMY
*All eight regional Government Offices: South-West, South-East, East Midlands, West Midlands, East of England, North-West, Yorkshire & the Humber and North-East
*Eight out of the nine regional development agencies (the exception being London) and some of their local subsidiaries: Advantage West Midlands, East Midlands Development Agency, Yorkshire Forward, South-West Regional Development Agency, South-East England Development Agency, East of England Development Agency, North-West Regional Development Agency, One North-East
*Strategic Advisory Board for Intellectual Property policy (SABIP)
*SITPRO (Simplifying International Trade)
*Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment Advisory Body (WAB)
*British Shipbuilders Corporation
*UfI/Learndirect
*Learning & Skills Improvement Service
*Institute for Learning *Standards and Verification UK
*IiP UK
*Hearing Aid Council
*Investors in People UK

HOME OFFICE
*National Policing Improvement Agency

ENVIRONMENT
*Sustainable Development Commission (funding withdrawn)
*Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution
*Agricultural Wages Board, the 15 Agricultural Wages Committees, the 16 Agricultural Dwelling House Advisory Committees and the Committee on Agricultural Valuation
*Inland Waterways Advisory Council
*The Commons Commissioners
*Infrastructure Planning Commission
*Commission for Rural Communities

MERGED

ARTS AND SPORT
*UK Sport and Sport England
*National Lottery Commission with the Gambling Commission

UNDER THREAT

ARTS
*Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment, English Heritage, Heritage Lottery Fund, National Heritage Memorial Fund – could be merged
*Advisory Committee on National Historic Ships (declassified, functions transferred to another body)
*Theatres Trust (declassified, so can act as an independent statutory advisory body)
*Churches Conservation Trust (could be declassified, pending talks with the Church of England) *Visit England and Visit Britain (status, role and functions will change)
*Design Council (under review)

BUSINESS
*Local Better Regulation Office
*ACAS (Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service)
*Local Better Regulation Office
*Ofcom (in the short term it is losing its policy making power)
FOOD
*Food Standards Agency (its responsibilities have been much reduced)

ENVIRONMENT
*Carbon Trust (could be merged into new UK Green Investment Bank)
EDUCATION
*Partnership for Schools (school-building)
*Training and Development Agency (was facing the axe, but may now be spared)
SOCIETY
*Children's Commissioner for England – under review
*Equality and Human Rights Commission – has been accused of wastefulness by Home Secretary and faces further cuts

Auditors refuse to sign off MoD accounts

National Audit Office says 'systemic' problems mean defence ministry is unable to account for £6bn of equipment

The National Audit Office today refused to sign off the Ministry of Defence's annual accounts, for the fourth year in a row.

The spending watchdog said the MoD was unable to account properly for more than £6bn of equipment. The head of the audit office, Amyas Morse, said that despite efforts by the MoD to tackle the issue, there remained "systemic and deep-rooted" problems with its asset management system.

He said it had emerged that the problems were more extensive than previously thought as the work done to track down the equipment brought fresh difficulties to light.

The NAO found the MoD was unable to account for the whereabouts of £5.5bn of spares and other stocks, and £752m of military equipment, including firearms and 5,961 Bowman radios worth £184m.

"Despite action by the department to improve its asset management and accounting, the issues I have identified are systemic and deep-rooted," Mr Morse said. "The level of control exercised by the department is not yet sufficient to enable me to provide an opinion on a significant proportion of assets reported in the financial statements."

The MoD said that the issues raised by the NAO had no impact on the provision of essential equipment to frontline troops. "The National Audit Office has recognised that the MoD has improved procedures for inventory management and, by the end of March this year, had completed a full reconciliation of Bowman radios," a spokesman said. "We are continuing to work hard to improve our inventory management and ensure our accounting systems become compliant with financial reporting standards, but recognise that both issues will take time to be rectified."

DIY Police?

Cameron's answer to budget cuts: get public involved in 'DIY' policing

David Cameron's "big society in action" answer to police budget cuts has been revealed as a plan to appeal to the public to take part in "do-it-yourself" policing ‑ and perhaps even go on patrol with uniformed officers.

A radical police reform white paper published by the home secretary, Theresa May, says that she wants to explore new ideas including creating a reserve army of volunteers prepared to act as community crime fighters along similar lines to fire reservists who help staff some neighbourhood fire stations.

The idea for greater public involvement in policing emerged as the home secretary's Liberal Democrat coalition partners warned that the current state of her proposals to introduce directly-elected police and crime commissioners are in danger of giving a green light to "Judge Dredd populists".

Given that we are all also expected ("Call Me Dave" and Boy George Osborne" etal exempted of course) under the "big society in action" to volutarily cut the verges, clear the litter, run the schools, nurse the sick, care for the infirm... it does beg the question, when will we be able to find the time to do all this voluntary work?

Presumably when we are unemployed!

The Gravy Train.

Civil servants find lucrative roles in private sector

The predicted explosion in the public services market will see a stream of top civil servants and managers being offered lucrative packages to join private outsourcing companies competing for government business.

Some of these will have been instrumental in drawing up government policy and providing advice to ministers. Many who have gone already have been accompanied by their ministerial bosses.

Ministers who have taken paid non-executive positions in the private health sector include Milburn, who became an adviser to Bridgepoint, a private equity firm specialising in healthcare investments. Patricia Hewitt, health secretary 2005-07, became an adviser to Cinven, a private hospitals group. And Lord Warner, a health minister 2003-2007, became chairman of the government sector advisory panel for Xansa, which provides business and accounting services to the NHS.

The former top civil servant Sir Bruce Liddington, once in charge of Labour's academy schools programme under Tony Blair left the Department for Education in January 2009 to become the £250,000-a-year director of E-Act, a social enterprise and registered charity which operates eight academy schools funded with £50m of public money. It has plans to develop five more academies. The one-time head teacher was accused earlier this year of enjoying a "culture of excess" after he claimed thousands of pounds for stays in luxury hotels and taxi hire to visit academies around the country. E-Act said Liddington repaid the money and denied he used limousines.

Remember the promises from 'Call Me' Dave?

Dave: "Let me say clearly to any pensioner... you are getting letters from Labour to say that we would cut the winter fuel allowance, free bus travel and free TV licence. These statements are simply lies, I don't use that word often, but I am today because they are lies." Press Conference, 23 March 2010

Dave: "We will keep the free TV licence, the winter fuel allowance, the free bus pass. Those leaflets you have been getting from Labour, the letters you have been getting from Labour are pure and simple lies." Leaders debate, 22 April 2010

In todays Mail, read the following:

"Now wait five more years to get your bus pass: Millions face means test to get free travel"

Read More Here

Britain’s debt: The untold story

The true scale of Britain's national indebtedness was laid bare by the Office for National Statistics yesterday: almost £4 trillion, or £4,000bn, about four times higher than previously acknowledged.

It quantifies the burden that will be placed on future generations, and it is the ONS's first attempt to draw together the "off-balance-sheet" liabilities that have been accumulated by the state. The figures imply a huge "intergenerational transfer" – broadly in favour of today's "baby boomer" generation at the expense of younger people and future generations.

The debt primarily consists of the cost of public sector and state pensions, and of payments promised to private contractors under private finance initiatives. It far exceeds any of the figures so far published for the national debt, the largest current estimate for which is £903bn. That is projected to rise to £1.3trn by 2015.

If the current generation of taxpayers wanted to remove the higher bills facing their children and grandchildren, they would now be paying around 30 per cent more in tax.

The ONS data strengthens the Government's hand in its attempt to pull down state spending.

The ONS itemised the public sector's main liabilities as:

* Future payments for the state old age pension: £1.1trn to £1.4trn
* Unfunded public sector pensions for teachers, NHS staff and civil servants: £770bn to £1.2trn
* Payments under private finance initiative contracts: £200bn
* Contingent liabilities (eg bank deposit guarantees): £500bn
* Nuclear power plant decommissioning: £45bn
* Impact of financial sector interventions: £1trn to £1.5trn

Leaving aside the possibility of another financial meltdown that would leave the taxpayer with the liabilities of a substantial part of the banking system, the figures suggest that the realistic total liabilities of the public sector could be as much as £3.8trn (£3,800,000,000,000).

Read More Here

Civil Service Compensation Scheme

The coalition government has announced plans to introduce new legislation to cap redundancy payments for civil servants and

It is crucial that we continue to keep up the political pressure in the campaign. We are calling on all members and supporters to ask their local MPs to sign EDM 301 and to also ask the Cabinet Office Minister the Rt Hon Francis Maude MP to urgently enter into new negotiations on the CSCS.

Please email your MP and ask for their support in our campaign: www.pcs.org.uk/cscseaction

How can civil service cuts be blamed on union court action?

Despite Francis Maude's weasel words, the Tories would almost certainly have attacked civil service redundancy terms anyway

Mark Serwotka in the Guardian today.

The logic of claiming, as Daniel Calder does, that Francis Maude would not have had to trump the previous government's cuts to civil service redundancy were it not for me, is hard to follow.

The argument seems to go that my union, the Public and Commercial Services union (PCS), is at fault for proving twice in the high court that it was unlawful for the government to rip up the contracts of its staff without their agreement.

The ruling means the government should not have imposed the changes. But, under the cover of demonising PCS for successfully defending its members' interests in court, this is precisely what Maude's coalition now plans to do.

The government is unique as an employer – no other boss would be able to make new laws simply because the existing ones make it impossible to impose its will on its staff. But the article appears to suggest that this is an acceptable way to conduct industrial relations. Well, I find the idea of that utterly abhorrent and, in fact, it makes having strong unions in the civil service doubly important.

So the real question is, why are the Tories' proposals so much worse than the previous government's if Maude truly believes that his actions "might not have been necessary" were it not for our court victory?

The weasel word gives it away. It only "might" not have been necessary. But given the Tories have long said civil service redundancy terms should be brought more into line with the private sector, it is almost a certainty that they would have done this anyway.

Yes, the Tories' plans are an absolute disgrace. But if cuts to contractual rights are wrong under the Tories, they were wrong under Labour.

I accept there is some anger out there, but let us turn it into opposition against this coalition government, which has wasted no time in setting about realising an ideological ambition of the old Tory right to dismantle the welfare state piece by piece. This time, however, it is not doing it from the position of strength enjoyed by previous Tory governments. It is being held in power with the supine support of the Liberal Democrats, who once opposed many of the measures they now apparently believe are necessary.

To help it in its task, this "fair and progressive" coalition intends to rip up the contracts of its workforce and use its privileged position as legislator and executive to force staff to bend to its will. PCS, as a union, says quite simply and logically that it shouldn't be allowed to get away with it.

Redundancy pay to be capped 'as soon as possible'

Legislation is to be introduced as soon as possible to cap redundancy payments to civil servants, the Government announced today.

A Bill will be introduced to limit the cost of future redundancy payments by capping all compulsory redundancy pay-offs at 12 months' pay and limiting amounts for voluntary severance to 15 months' salary.

Read More Here.

Tax justice - alternative to public sector cuts

PCS members are playing a leading role in the fight for tax justice. Our message is clear – A properly resourced, fair tax system will support quality public services and go a long way to eradicating poverty.

This page provides the latest information and resources on our tax justice campaigning.

Background

The tax gap is currently estimated to stand at £100 billion. This is seriously undermining public services and the development of a more equal society, both in the UK and globally.This is due in no small part to swingeing cuts in HM Revenue and Customs, the Department responsible for bringing in tax revenue. Over 20,000 jobs have already been cut with a further 5,000 job cuts and 200 office closures expected by 2011.

PCS’s high profile HooT (Hands Off Our Tax offices) campaign aims to stop these arbitrary and inefficient cuts. Instead of cutting public services we argue that the government should invest in this area to tackle the economic crisis.

PCS are also joining forces with the likes of War on Want and the Tax justice network to campaign against global injustices in the tax system.

The economies of developing countries are being hit hard as essential public services rely on the taxes collected by their governments. It is estimated that £250 billion is being denied to these economies because of corporate tax dodging.

PCS are supporting calls to the world’s economic leaders for transparency in the international financial system. We are urging all members sign the G20 transparency petition.

The 'Boys' Budget Bombshell

Now the damage of last Tuesdays budget and the further deeper cuts into the public finances is being calculated.

600,000 public sector jobs lost! A pay freeze and pension levy on the rest. All at a place of work, near you, soon.

Half a million private sector jobs will be lost.

35,000 police jobs to go.

Thousands of prison places to be closed.

School breakfasts cancelled for 500,000 of the poorest primary school children. And free school meals to be attacked and canteens probably to be closed across all of education.

And this is just the tip of the iceberg! But still, the band plays on as billionaires and bankers waltz on untouched and untrammelled by the financial chaos that they are wholly and soley responsible for. They must have gone to right schools and joined the right clubs.