Members of Parliament have last night voted in favour of placing a cap on "unaffordable and unsustainable" redundancy pay in the Civil Service.
MPs voted the Superannuation Bill, which would cap redundancy pay at one year's salary or 15 months for voluntary redundancies, through at its second reading by 326 votes to 244. Attempts to implement the previous Labour administration's reform proposals instead by means of an amendment were defeated by 329 votes to 240.
Opening the debate, Cabinet Office Minister Francis Maude urged civil service unions to agree new redundancy terms and make the Bill ''a dead letter'' before it becomes law. But he warned that a single trade union would not be allowed to stand in the way of reforming the current arrangements. Mr Maude said the current scheme made it ''prohibitively expensive'' to get rid of highly-paid, long-serving staff, meaning lower-paid workers were disproportionately hit if job cuts were needed.
We believe these changes are purely to make it possible to on the cheap, dispose of thousands upon thousands of civil servants.
Amazingly Shadow Cabinet Office minister Tessa Jowell agreed that the current redundancy scheme provided ''overly generous and disproportionate benefits for some very highly-paid people''!
However, she at least argued that reform ought to provide more "protection for the lowest-paid". She added that the Bill was being used ''very deliberately to force the trade unions into compliance'', which was a ''very unusual use of parliamentary procedure''.
We believe we will see more of this during this ConDem'd government.
