Its a Euro millions rollover...by Cameron.

After promising at the very least a freeze and probably a reduction to the EU budget, tough talking toff 'Call Me Dave' Cameron went to Europe...

....and his much vaunted freeze has cost us an additional £500 million a year?

Wow, tough on the UK budget. Tough on benefit cheats. Tough on housing benefit. Tough on helicopters for our troops.

But when it comes to tax avoiders, cheats and the EU gravy train, the Eton rifle fires blanks!

The 'Boy', the canceled demand, and a moral crime?

For years now, Vodafone has been refusing to pay billions of pounds of taxes to the British people that are outstanding. The company – which has doubled its profits during this recession – engaged in all kinds of accounting twists and turns, but it was eventually ruled this refusal breached anti-tax avoidance rules. They looked set to pay a sum Private Eye calculates to be more than £6bn.

Then, suddenly, the exchequer – run by George Osborne – cancelled almost all of the outstanding tax bill, in a move a senior figure in Revenues and Customs says is “an unbelievable cave-in.” A few days after the decision, Osborne was promoting Vodafone on a tax-payer funded trip to India. He then appointed Andy Halford, the finance director of Vodafone, to the government’s Advisory Board on Business Tax Rates, apparently because he thinks this is a model of how the Tories think it should be done.

By contrast, the Indian government chose to pursue Vodafone through the courts for the billions in tax they have failed to pay there. Yes, the British state is less functional than the Indian state when it comes to collecting revenues from the wealthy. This is not an isolated incident. Richard Murphy, of Tax Research UK, calculates that UK corporations fail to pay a further £12bn a year in taxes they legally owe, while the rich avoid or evade up to £120bn.

Read the full article here

Financial crisis? Whose exactly?

The amazing 'Boy' George Osborne and his assistant the ever willing stooge Danny 'I'll do it' Alexander have managed to hoodwink the British public into thinking two very important things.

Firstly, that the country has been teetering on the brink of bankruptcy.

Secondly, that they are the only ones with the magic to get us out of it!

Surprising then to discover that in this year of impending economic double disaster, the pay of FTSE100 company directors rose a staggering 55% in the 12 months to June 2010 (effectively before this magic duo came to power) and the total boardroom pay of FTSE350 companies increased by 45%. (Read more here)Many of these companies, in the same period, had imposed pay freezes on their workers in response to the 'economic crisis'. No doubt these pay freezes gave all of their staff, voters every one, an object lesson in the seriousness of the situation. Perhaps even persuading them for the need for change.

Well, change effected, and then somehow out of it all the bosses have managed to pay themselves massive rises. How can that be so in such an economic crisis? One in which, with slight of hand, we are told that, "we are all in this together"? Well, freeze the pay of your production staff and effectively you have reduced costs, increasing profit margins... It's an old trick that few ever see.

Economic crisis. Magic more like. You'll like it... but not a lot.

Bolshi Boris rebels against the Cameroons

Boris Johnson has openly attacked David Cameron's plans to place a cap on housing benefit declaring the proposal would lead to Kosovo-style social cleansing.

First, Vince Cable had a go at "Call Me" Dave and his half baked policies, now it's the Mayor of London.

In an interview with BBC London, Mr Johnson said: "The last thing we want to have in our city is a situation such as Paris where the less well-off are pushed out to the suburbs.

"I'll emphatically resist any attempt to recreate a London where the rich and poor cannot live together.

He went on to say: "What we will not see and we will not accept any kind of Kosovo-style social cleansing of London.

"On my watch, you are not going to see thousands of families evicted from the place where they have been living and have put down roots."

Read more here

Who would have thought that this rich buffoon would have socialist leanings?

Or perhaps there is an election looming?

You decide.

Civil service chief warns of compulsory redundancies

The head of the civil service has said he cannot rule out compulsory redundancies to reduce staff numbers.

It is estimated that 490,000 public sector jobs could go over five years, due to spending cuts.
Sir Gus O'Donnell told MPs it could not be done just "through natural wastage" and compulsory redundancies "would be part of the answer".

He said departments were still working out what new spending limits, unveiled last week, would mean for jobs.

CUTS! CUTS! CUTS! Unless?

490,000 public service jobs here...

Troop reductions there....

£7 billion cut in welfare benefits there...

Cancelled school building programs...

Increased tuition fees...

A Pay freeze, a compensation scheme squeeze, and pension reforms...

But Vodaphone is waived a £6 billion charge in unpaid tax by the government?

Perhaps someone has shares in it!

Read more here, And here

....and a Noble prize winner says...

British Fashion Victims
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: October 21, 2010 in the NY Times

In the spring of 2010, fiscal austerity became fashionable. I use the term advisedly: the sudden consensus among Very Serious People that everyone must balance budgets now now now wasn’t based on any kind of careful analysis. It was more like a fad, something everyone professed to believe because that was what the in-crowd was saying.

And it’s a fad that has been fading lately, as evidence has accumulated that the lessons of the past remain relevant, that trying to balance budgets in the face of high unemployment and falling inflation is still a really bad idea. Most notably, the confidence fairy has been exposed as a myth. There have been widespread claims that deficit-cutting actually reduces unemployment because it reassures consumers and businesses; but multiple studies of historical record, including one by the International Monetary Fund, have shown that this claim has no basis in reality.

No widespread fad ever passes, however, without leaving some fashion victims in its wake. In this case, the victims are the people of Britain, who have the misfortune to be ruled by a government that took office at the height of the austerity fad and won’t admit that it was wrong.
Britain, like America, is suffering from the aftermath of a housing and debt bubble. Its problems are compounded by London’s role as an international financial center: Britain came to rely too much on profits from wheeling and dealing to drive its economy — and on financial-industry tax payments to pay for government programs.

Over-reliance on the financial industry largely explains why Britain, which came into the crisis with relatively low public debt, has seen its budget deficit soar to 11 percent of G.D.P. — slightly worse than the U.S. deficit. And there’s no question that Britain will eventually need to balance its books with spending cuts and tax increases.

The operative word here should, however, be “eventually.” Fiscal austerity will depress the economy further unless it can be offset by a fall in interest rates. Right now, interest rates in Britain, as in America, are already very low, with little room to fall further. The sensible thing, then, is to devise a plan for putting the nation’s fiscal house in order, while waiting until a solid economic recovery is under way before wielding the ax.

But trendy fashion, almost by definition, isn’t sensible — and the British government seems determined to ignore the lessons of history.

Both the new British budget announced on Wednesday and the rhetoric that accompanied the announcement might have come straight from the desk of Andrew Mellon, the Treasury secretary who told President Herbert Hoover to fight the Depression by liquidating the farmers, liquidating the workers, and driving down wages. Or if you prefer more British precedents, it echoes the Snowden budget of 1931, which tried to restore confidence but ended up deepening the economic crisis.

The British government’s plan is bold, say the pundits — and so it is. But it boldly goes in exactly the wrong direction. It would cut government employment by 490,000 workers — the equivalent of almost three million layoffs in the United States — at a time when the private sector is in no position to provide alternative employment. It would slash spending at a time when private demand isn’t at all ready to take up the slack.

Why is the British government doing this? The real reason has a lot to do with ideology: the Tories are using the deficit as an excuse to downsize the welfare state. But the official rationale is that there is no alternative.

Indeed, there has been a noticeable change in the rhetoric of the government of Prime Minister David Cameron over the past few weeks — a shift from hope to fear. In his speech announcing the budget plan, George Osborne, the chancellor of the Exchequer, seemed to have given up on the confidence fairy — that is, on claims that the plan would have positive effects on employment and growth.

Instead, it was all about the apocalypse looming if Britain failed to go down this route. Never mind that British debt as a percentage of national income is actually below its historical average; never mind that British interest rates stayed low even as the nation’s budget deficit soared, reflecting the belief of investors that the country can and will get its finances under control. Britain, declared Mr. Osborne, was on the “brink of bankruptcy.”

What happens now? Maybe Britain will get lucky, and something will come along to rescue the economy. But the best guess is that Britain in 2011 will look like Britain in 1931, or the United States in 1937, or Japan in 1997. That is, premature fiscal austerity will lead to a renewed economic slump. As always, those who refuse to learn from the past are doomed to repeat it.

Fair's, fair? Or is it 'social cleansing'?

The Government has dismissed talk of a climbdown over capping housing benefit, despite warnings that the policy will "cleanse" poor people from major cities.

Sources close to Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith said he was "absolutely determined" to push through tough reforms.

The coalition has announced plans that would limit housing benefit at around £400 a week for a four-bedroom home, and cut payouts by 10% when people have been on jobseeker's allowance for more than a year.

So lets get this right. The ConDems are going to put around half a million of us out of work, and if they have their way, on around a 12 months payoff. Then, 12 months later, when we haven't been able to find a job, and have used the bulk of the the payoff to maintain life and limb and clear debts, they will then cut housing benefit by 10%? A tax on unemployment effectively! And this seems "fair" in which universe?
Of course, we are regailed with the unfairness of the amount of HB paid in respect of the unemployed, the disabled, the old, and sometimes a case can be made. But how does a cap of £400 pounds a week for a 4 bedroom family house play in the real world of the inner cities. For instance, in Fleetwood, not the most properous of towns, a two up two down un-furnished terraced house down the street costs £550 per month!

Even Liberal Democrat deputy leader Simon Hughes is among those who have criticised the "draconian" proposals, saying ministers will have to "negotiate" to get parliamentary approval.
Labour frontbencher Chris Bryant told MPs on Tuesday that the cuts would lead to "cleansing" of the poor from areas with high rents, while some Conservative backbenchers with urban constituencies have also expressed concerns.

Our troops betrayed again.

We all remember the pressure that the Labour government came under regarding the lack of sufficient helicopter (transport) support from the troops in Afghanistan. Large sections of the media, ex-service groups, senior and junior service personnel and the public all believed that the lack of Chinook helicopters was contributing to the mounting death toll as soldiers were forced to travel from A to B either on foot or in equally vulnerable light vehicles.

The chorus of criticisms got pretty personal suggesting that Gordon himself was to blame for the deaths of many service personnel. Eventually the government acted and informed parliament that it was to order 20 (some reports suggested 22) Chinnok helicopters.

The Mail’s headline was

‘Government orders 20 Chinooks in £1bn face-saving deal’

They added;

The Government is to order 20 troop-carrying Chinooks after the families
of soldiers killed in Afghanistan told Gordon Brown they blamed their deaths on helicopter shortages.

The face-saving £1billion deal with US aircraft-maker Boeing was being seen last night as a desperate pre-Election move by Labour to defuse the helicopter row.

In 2009 The Commons defence select committee said that a lack of helicopters is undermining UK forces' operations and troop protection in Afghanistan.

The defence select committee says commanders "have to use ground transport" - with worrying effects on protection of personnel.

The Tories said it was "irrefutable" that a 2004 cut in the helicopter budget was now hurting British efforts.

"Now, when we need more vital equipment, the cupboard is bare," said shadow defence secretary Liam Fox.

"No amount of evasion and creative accounting can disguise the fact that our troops are being let down."

The Lib Dems said ministers had "failed to respond" to clear evidence that helicopter numbers were inadequate.

During the Prime Minister’s announcements about the defence spending review he said

‘There is no cut whatsoever in the support for our forces in Afghanistan ... we have been and will be providing more for our brave forces in Afghanistan [including] crucially, at last, the right level of helicopter capability.’

The reality of the situation is that he has cut the order almost in half, down to 12 helicopters. Curiously there has been hardly a word said about that. We will leave you to make up your minds about Mr. Cameron’s statement on support fot the troops is Afghanistan.

Vince Cable's dig at David Cameron

David Cameron and other senior Conservatives failed to predict and prepare for the global economic downturn

The Business Secretary used a speech to corporate executives to “mischievously” criticise the Tories for adopting a naive economic policy in the run-up to the recession.

He said those warning of the reckless lending practices of banks and the accumulation of debts — as he did — were seen as “eccentrics” or “party poopers”.

The Business Secretary also used his speech to the annual CBI conference to attack company chief executives over their pay packages and announced a consultation on improving corporate governance.

His comments were an embarrassing rebuke to Mr Cameron and George Osborne, the Chancellor, who have spent the past few weeks warning of the damage that Gordon Brown and Labour caused to the economy and public services.

Mr Cable claimed that many of the economic assumptions now being attacked by the Conservatives were supported by them until recently. His comments came hours after Mr Cameron set out his own plans to encourage economic growth.

Mr Cable said: “Just a few years ago, most people in politics, not only Gordon Brown, thought the growth problem had been solved.

“The only dispute was between those who shared Gordon Brown’s view that the British economy was healthier than at any time since the Hanoverians and those who thought we had to go back to the Romans.

“I don’t mean to be mischievous when I point out that even my Conservative Coalition colleagues were busy developing policies about 'sharing the proceeds of growth’; the assumption – widely shared – being that strong growth was bound to continue.

“Those of us who were worrying publicly about the unsustainable build-up of household debt, the housing bubble and the lending practices of banks were regarded as eccentrics or party poopers.”
Until shortly before the global economic crisis, the Conservatives supported the Labour government’s spending plans. They adopted a policy known as “sharing the proceeds of growth” that would have involved extra tax revenues earned as a result of economic growth being “shared” between cutting taxes and increasing government spending.

Official figures to be released today are expected to show Britain’s economic recovery is faltering.
In his CBI speech, Mr Cable, who has revelled in his reputation for being one of the few to have warned about the debt bubble during the boom years, also attacked executives and “self-indulgent” bankers and indicated that he would seek to rein in pay packages. He referred to a quote by Richard Lambert, the CBI chief, that leaders of big companies seen as occupying a different galaxy from the rest of the country risked being treated as “aliens”. Mr Cable said: “Perhaps it is time to return to planet Earth.”

We say perhaps it is time for Mr Cable to extract himself from this ConDemed coalition and make a principled stand against what he himself knows to be the wholly wrong headed economic policies of this government.

Them and us: millionaire mansions double as house prices fall

Ordinary members house prices are falling as mortgage lending slumps to its lowest level in 10 years but the number of mansions fetching over a milliomn pounds more than doubled during the last year, according to the Halifax.

Britain’s biggest mortgage lender analysed Land Registry data and reports that nearly 3,000 properties were sold for more than £1m – an increase of 118 per cent on the year before.

Nine in 10 of the million-pound-plus sales recorded by the Land Registry were located in London. While properties in this bracket account for less than 1 per cent of the total across Britain, they represent nearly one in 20 – or 4.5 per cent – of the market in the capital. And the proportion is rising; the number of million-pound-plus sales in London increased by 134 per cent.

There is growing confidence at the higher end of the market. There were more than 7,000 properties for sale in London last month with asking prices of more than £1m. That’s an increase of more than 20 per cent on the year before.

Of course, asking isn’t the same thing as getting. But the Land Registry data demonstrates that six-figure sales are becoming more commonplace in the capital despite falling prices elsewhere across the country.

Explanations include London’s prominent position in global financial services and reputation for fair treatment of foreigners in law and taxation. Russian oligarchs and American plutocrats find the stucco mansions of Kensington and Chelsea, Hampstead and Highgate pleasant and safe places to park wealth acquired elsewhere.

And here we were thinking we are all in this together.

100,000 civil servants to quit at 50 on full pensions?

Well, according to todays Mail. They report the following:

More than 100,000 civil servants taking voluntary redundancy in the state spending cuts will be able to retire at 50 on gold-plated final salary pensions (ed:you have to laugh), it emerged yesterday.

While the Coalition tries to slash its wage bill, it is offering generous redundancy packages to public sector workers in town halls and government departments.

In exchange for giving up a lump-sum redundancy payout, workers will be able to take their full final salary pension immediately.

But of course, this is the Mail we are talking about, so this has to be taken with a pinch or salt.

Read more: here

Now the Telegraph compare us to Fred Goodwin of RBS fame. Nice. You can read their error ridden diatribe here.

On yer bus, Duncan Smith

Job vacancy numbers make mockery of Duncan Smith bus comment. PCS finds jobseekers outnumber vacancies nine to one in area work and pensions secretary identified in his speech.

The work and pensions secretary said last week that Merthyr Tydfil in south Wales was an example of a place where people had become "static" and did not know that if they got on the bus they would be in Cardiff an hour later, and could look for work there.

"We need to recognise the jobs often don't come to you. Sometimes you need to go to the jobs," said the former Tory leader, who was criticised by union leaders for "insulting" the unemployed.

Research by the Public and Commercial Services union showed there were 15,000 people in Cardiff chasing 1,700 jobs, while in Merthyr there were 1,670 unemployed people and 39 job vacancies, all temporary and part-time.

The number of people out of work in Merthyr and Blaenau Gwent combined was more than the total number of job vacancies for the whole of Wales, said the PCS. The vast majority of vacancies in Cardiff were temporary and part-time, mainly unskilled labouring, for just one or three weeks' duration, said the union.

The most popular vacancy on the day the union carried out its research last week was a Christmas job in a well-known store working four-hour shifts on Saturdays and Sundays for the national minimum wage.

Among the permanent jobs was work in a casino or bars. Neither offered help with journeys home afterwards and the last bus out of Cardiff leaves at 11.06pm, the union pointed out. "Workers from outside the city might be able to get the bus to work, but they would not be able to get home," said a spokesman.

"These figures prove it is not a question of people not being willing to work, there simply are not enough jobs for them to do – and there are unlikely to be any time soon because of the government's plans to cut public spending, including cutting 15,000 more jobs in the Department for Work and Pensions."

When people sign on, they have to agree to travel up to an hour by bus to find work, increasing to an hour and a half after six months, said the union. "Instead of vilifying the unemployed, the government should be creating jobs and opportunities to help people get back to work and to help our economy to grow. It should also put proper resources into jobcentres to help jobseekers find suitable employment," said the spokesman.

Coalition of Resistance

http://www.coalitionofresistance.org.uk/

It is time to organise a broad movement of active resistance to the Con-Dem government's budget intentions. They plan the most savage spending cuts since the 1930s, which will wreck the lives of millions by devastating our jobs, pay, pensions, NHS, education, transport, postal and other services.

The government claims the cuts are unavoidable because the welfare state has been too generous. This is nonsense. Ordinary people are being forced to pay for the bankers' profligacy.
The £11bn welfare cuts, rise in VAT to 20%, and 25% reductions across government departments target the most vulnerable – disabled people, single parents, those on housing benefit, black and other ethnic minority communities, students, migrant workers, LGBT people and pensioners.

Women are expected to bear 75% of the burden. The poorest will be hit six times harder than the richest. Internal Treasury documents estimate 1.3 million job losses in public and private sectors.

We reject this malicious vandalism and resolve to campaign for a radical alternative, with the level of determination shown by trade unionists and social movements in Greece and other European countries.

This government of millionaires says "we're all in it together" and "there is no alternative". But, for the wealthy, corporation tax is being cut, the bank levy is a pittance, and top salaries and bonuses have already been restored to pre-crash levels.

An alternative budget would place the banks under democratic control, and raise revenue by increasing tax for the rich, plugging tax loopholes, withdrawing troops from Afghanistan, abolishing the nuclear "deterrent" by cancelling the Trident replacement.

An alternative strategy could use these resources to: support welfare; develop homes, schools, and hospitals; and foster a green approach to public spending – investing in renewable energy and public transport, thereby creating a million jobs.

We commit ourselves to:

• Oppose cuts and privatisation in our workplaces, community and welfare services.
• Fight rising unemployment and support organisations of unemployed people.
• Develop and support an alternative programme for economic and social recovery.
• Oppose all proposals to "solve" the crisis through racism and other forms of scapegoating.
• Liaise closely with similar opposition movements in other countries.
• Organise information, meetings, conferences, marches and demonstrations.
• Support the development of a national co-ordinating coalition of resistance.

We urge those who support this statement to attend the Organising Conference on 27 November 2010 (10am-5pm), at Camden Centre, Town Hall, London, WC1H 9JE.

Signed:
Tony Benn
Caroline Lucas MP
John McDonnell MP
Jeremy Corbyn MP
Mark Serwotka, general secretary PCS
Bob Crow, general secretary RMT
Jeremy Dear, general secretary NUJ

Many more signatories can be seen here.

Mixed messages

There seem to have been mixed messages given about the TUS position on cuts and some intimation that we have agreed to cuts in the Agency. Let us clarify the PCS position.

There have been informal talks about a re-organisation of Ops (as well as formal talks re the Veterans Services that are well known) and we have made our position perfectly clear. If a reorganisation is due to declining work we have said we will work constructively with the Agency. We will also be constructive with changes that will fend off privatisation.

That does not mean that we will agree changes or reductions. We will look at the figures, consult with members and criticise as necessary and appropriate. We will not sell our members short.

Separate to this is the ConDem’ned politically motivated cuts for the ideological goal of crushing the Welfare State – details of which were released over the last two days. We will oppose any such cut. Any cut that is politically motivated without a workload rationalisation is wrong and the AMG have been told our categorical position with regards this. Any AMG member that says otherwise is selling you a pup.

Andy Boylan

Veterans Agency National Branch Chair

Defence Cuts Cost – the PCS fight back starts here

The SDSR announcement of 25,000 civilian job losses in the Ministry of Defence is a devastating blow to staff, whose loyalty and commitment in support of the front line has been thrown away in pursuit of an ideologically driven slash and burn cuts exercise.

These proposals will mean approximately 40% of the existing civilian workforce losing their jobs in the next five years. Not only will this permanently damage support to the front line, it will devastate families, communities and futures throughout the country.

Richard Murphy of the Tax Justice Network has revealed that 92 per cent of the cost of cutting public sector jobs when we have less than full employment is paid by the state, making it counter-productive economically.

The Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR) was a missed opportunity. Instead of a strategic analysis of future defence needs, we have an incoherent mess which delivers cuts in expenditure and jobs where civilians have been seen as an easy political target. The opportunity to make significant savings, by replacing military staff carrying out civilian functions has been lost. Experts such as Gerry Grimstone (Margaret Thatcher’s privatisation guru) and Sir Richard Dannatt (the previous Chief of General Staff) agree. Civilianising the approximately 40,000 non-deployable military personnel in our department can protect bases, sites and jobs and deliver support to the front line more effectively.

Our union has put this alternative to the MoD and the government many times. Similarly we have asked that the government tackles the £120 billion of tax avoided, evade or uncollected annually in this country.

In the debate after the SDSR announcement, in a response to a question by the Labour leader, David Cameron stated, “the previous Government left more civil servants than we had sailors or airmen.”

Nothing to do with a more strategic defence department; nothing to do with making those who caused the economic deficit pay for it and little to do with the financial or operational state of the MoD. It is quite clear that the SDSR announcements and the wider public sector comprehensive spending review announcements are purely about ideological right wing policies to rid Britain of a worthwhile public sector.

The Chancellor, in his Comprehensive Spending Review announcement, confirms that half a million public sector jobs to go, with at least half a million more private sector jobs to follow.

What will happen if bases and sites close?

There is very little information in the Review about what bases and sites might close, with the detail to follow from the Levene Defence Reform Review. Defence activities are often located in remote and rural locations where any reductions negatively impact on the local economy.

However we can look at the only base closure announced, RAF Kinloss, as an example. RAF Kinloss in Moray, is situated in the north east of Scotland and makes a significant contribution to the local economy and social environment. Highlands and Islands Enterprise and Moray Council commissioned a major study into the economic impact of the RAF bases on Moray in 2005, and commissioned an update in 2010. The RAF has been in Moray for around 65 years and is therefore tightly woven into the social and economic fabric of the whole community. The RAF makes a significant contribution to the population and economic prosperity of the area, collectively supporting 5,710 FTE jobs in the local economy, some 16% of all FTE employment within Moray. Gross income from the bases is estimated at around £158m per annum.

Our union will be working with various regional agencies to get similar socio-economic assessments done in areas where MoD work is threatened and will be arguing that alternative jobs should be provided in locations where sites are closing to mitigate the impact of job losses on the local economy.


MoD senior management

Outgoing permanent under secretary (PUS), Bill Jeffrey wrote to our union today after the SDSR announcement stating “The Review makes clear that civilians play a critical role in Defence. They support Ministers in determining policy and strategy and in managing the resources allocated by Parliament. They also perform a range of vital roles in front line support to operations, from manning the Royal Fleet Auxiliary and providing fire safety to scientific knowledge, contracts expertise, logistics support and intelligence.”

As you will see from Mr Jeffrey's letter, he couldn't even be bothered writing his own words, he simply cut and paste what is in the White Paper!! We hope his successor values the MoD workforce much better.

Dealing with the job losses

The department states that there will be an early release scheme, to seek volunteers for redundancy, but expect there to be compulsory redundancies to meet the scale of the reductions. We will oppose enforced redundancies.

Our union has asked that the department starts the pre redundancy measures described in the Managing Surpluses policy, to mitigate the impact of job losses by ending the use of consultants and agency staff.

We have not been consulted on any early release scheme and will be seeking to ensure that any such scheme is based on an agreed compensation scheme terms, rather than the current Cabinet Office proposals.

Political campaigning

Last Wednesday (13 October), PCS reps went to the House of Commons to put the case for the PCS alternative to cuts to MP’s. A full report will be in the next issue of Defender, but two things we will be taking forward immediately are a further meeting with the chair of the Defence Select Committee and a further meeting with the Shadow Labour defence ministers.

Meeting such as these will allow our union to further advance the alternatives that we are putting forward and allows those who we meet to put these alternatives direct to the decision makers in government.

Our political campaigning however does not stop here. We have already asked branches to make contact with local trades councils and to work with them to put our alternatives forward at local and regional levels. We will also be seeking meetings with the political leaders in the devolved governments in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland; we will seek meeting with those involved in the Public Accounts Committee and we will continue to seek to have meetings with the defence ministers in the coalition government

Media campaigning

Below are links of just a few of the media interviews PCS MoD reps have done in the last couple of days regarding the SDSR announcement (figures are where PCS rep starts speaking). Whilst it is welcome that we have got this coverage and our campaigning work does get plenty of coverage in local or regional papers and on regional TV and radio, it is quite a deliberate choice that mainstream national TV and the vast majority of the written national press deliberately choose not to give us air time or column inches.

It is no coincidence that many of the newspapers in this country are owned and run by right wing tycoons or conglomerates and it should be remembered that they will never support our (or any other) trade union, regardless of how good our arguments are.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-north-east-orkney-shetland-11565829

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/console/b00vc27t/Newsdrive_19_10_2010 1.42.40

http://www.itv.com/westcountry-east/fullprogramme/?intcmp=NAV_THEWESTC0_FULLPROG4 15.05

http://www.shropshirestar.com/news/2010/10/19/raf-cosford-saved-from-the-axe/

http://www.itv.com/central-west/update-defence-review07914/ 1.15

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p00bk2b0/Adam_Tomlinson_19_10_2010/ 1.41.50

http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/index.php/content/view/full/96603

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p00bk2b6/Elly_Fiorentini_19_10_2010/ 1.04.55

http://www.thisisbath.co.uk/news/David-Cameron-Spending-cuts-damage-Britain-defence/article-2775107-detail/article.html

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p00bk3rq/Mark_ODonnell_19_10_2010/ 1.07.45

Follow our campaigning activities on Twitter (http://twitter.com/DefenceCutsCost), the PCS website (http://pcs.org.uk/mod) and our new defence cuts cost website (http://defencecutscost.blogspot.com/).

Next steps

Our union wants every member in every branch involved in both the MoD group and national campaigns against the Coalition’s attacks on the public sector. We need to put as much pressure on the Coalition government to fight back against the devastation announced for our department and the wider public service.

We are working with other unions and organisations. We know on the ground that our colleagues in other civil service unions have strong sympathies toward our union’s stand on issues like CSCS. As the effects of SDSR unfold, we will support members and branches locally in building cross union campaigns.

Our union’s national executive committee (NEC) and the MoD GEC will be meeting shortly to discuss the next stages of our campaign. If this government does not back down from these proposals, then both the NEC and GEC will discuss and debate all possible ways forward. Although it will be a last resort, we will also develop an industrial action strategy that may have to include industrial action.

We must use any and every means to fight such an employer.

Conclusion

One of our members when asked what they thought of the SDSR announcement said: “I have worked for the MOD for over twenty years, I have a mortgage, children. My family and I are terrified that in a very short time scale I will be unemployed; there are no jobs out there and if I lose my job my family will lose their home. I have one question. Why are civil servants the scapegoat, when we offer real value for money in supporting defence? It is clear to me that civil servants are not valued by the MoD. My pay was cut by £3000 when the MoD imposed cuts to the administrative grades pay scale, now they want to throw me on the scrap heap”.

This is the reality for members in the MoD and across the public sector. Add to this a pay freeze for those earning over £21,000; pensions contributions to rise so that you can work longer and get less and redundancy payments to be a fraction of what they currently are – ask yourself if you live in David Cameron’s fair big society?

If the answer is NO, then the fight back starts now. This will be the fight of our lives. Please get further involved in our union – sign up a non-member working alongside you. The stronger we are as a union, the more industrial power we have.

We are not alone; the Con Dem coalition government’s announcements this week will affect every public sector worker in the United Kingdom. This weekend there are major rallies planned for every main city across the country – please attend these and start the fightback.

THE TIME IS NOW TO SAVE JOBS, SITES AND COMMUNITIES

London Rally and lobby of Parliament

Just a note to inform you all of the rally at Westminster on the 19th of October.

I travelled down representing PCS for the constituency of Lancaster & Fleetwood with an arrangement to lobby Eric Ollernshaw MP in the Houses of Parliament.

By the time I arrived at Central Hall Westminster the venue was packed to the rafters so I could not enjoy the speakers, instead I milled about on the green with hundreds, nay thousands of other public sector workers. I noticed a large banner proclaiming the presence of the Prison Officers Association. I approached one of the carriers and introduced myself as a PCS member and asked for their view about the CSCS and the proposed 'new scheme'. Helpfully, just at that moment the Chair and General Secretary of the POA where on hand to answer my questions. Steve Gillen, the General Secretary of the POA kindly gave me the run down on the negotiations.

He told me that the Councils of Civil Service Unions had entered into negotiations with the government on the compensation scheme in the summer. The government had insisted on conducting these talks in absolute confidence, to which all the CSCU unions had agreed. In the first week of October, Francis Maude had insisted that the offer then on the table was the last that would be made and insisted on the unions agreeing to it or rejecting it by the 8th of October. Steve Gillen explained that he would have to take the offer to the POA National Executive Committee which was due to meet on the 12th, and that they could not respond before then. He believes also that Unite were in a similar position to the POA.

Despite this, Francis Maude then published the offer, a clear breech of "confidentiality" arrangements, as a full and final 'agreement' on the 7th October, in which he claimed that the POA and Unite had agreed the new scheme. This was a deliberate falsehood. The POA NEC met on the 12th of October and rejected the offer with a view to ballot their membership with a recommendation for rejection. Steve believes that the Unite is in a similar position. He also told me that they were planning on co-ordinating balloting and any 'action' with PCS and Unite. Prospect have agreed to ballot their membership in November.

Lobby

Due to the large numbers of people on the day, it took nearly two hours of queuing in the rain/sunshine/rain/sunshine under the watchful bronzed eyes of the leader of the English Taliban, Oliver Cromwell, before we were able to enter the lobby. Once there I met first with Eric Ollernshaw MP for Lancaster & Fleetwood who heard out the concerns I took to him. He agreed to take forward issues surrounding the costs of our 'public-private' partnerships and will ask questions in parliament in due course. I was also able to meet with Paul Maynard MP who was being lobbied by PCS representatives from DWP and HMRC on the Fylde Coast.

All in all it was a curates egg of a day, good in parts.

Yours fraternally
Ian Melvin
Veterans Agency PCS
National Branch Secretary

We are not all in this together.

Ministers will be largely untouched by the cuts they are introducing. Is this a Cabinet guided by the national interest or vested interests?

"There will be some redundancies," George Osborne told MPs insouciantly as he delivered his Spending Review (SR) on 20 October and confirmed 490,000 job losses in the public sector over the next four years. The day before, just 3,000 people from across the UK arrived in Westminster to join a "rally and lobby" organised by the Trades Union Congress (TUC) against the Chancellor's spending cuts. (Veterans Agency Branch was represented at this rally and local MPs Eric Ollernshaw and Paul Maynard were lobbied on your behalf.)

Meanwhile, across the Channel, French workers took to the streets for a seventh straight day of protests against their government's attempt to raise the retirement age by just two years, from 60 to 62. More than a million protesters have been disrupting schools, oil refineries and transport networks in France. "It's the street," Didier Caron, a striking Renault employee told reporters. "If the street works well, it could still win."

Despite media-induced memories of the Winter of Discontent, the British no longer do strikes, and certainly do not take to the streets in the same way as our confrères on the Continent. Or is that about to change? The phoney war is over. We are now a nation divided. The axe has fallen. The bloodletting has begun. Choose your own preferred metaphor or cliché but the cuts to public spending announced in the SR are unprecedented in size, scope and speed. Council budgets slashed by 7 per cent every year for four years; 19 per cent off departmental budgets over four years.

Don't blame us!

“The deficit made us do it," squeal members of the Con-Dem coalition, from Prime Minister David Cameron downwards. Ministers have long pretended that these cuts are for the common good. And in his speech to his party's conference, Osborne claimed to be a One Nation Conservative while dismissing his opponents as self-serving: "On the other side is Ed Miliband and the trade union leaders who put him where he is. The national interest or the vested interests."

Put to one side for a moment the long list of notable figures who have spoken out against Osborne-style austerity measures, from Barack Obama to a string of Nobel-Prize-winning economists (including the latest laureate, Christopher Pissarides of the LSE) and focus instead on the curious phrase, "the national interest". The idea that ministers are guided by the interests of the public at large, rather than those of the insular and privileged elite from which they are drawn, is laughable. Coalition ministers - Tories and Liberal Democrats alike - have little experience of unemployment or life on benefits; in fact, of any economic hardship whatsoever. Twenty-two out of 29 cabinet ministers (76 per cent) are millionaires, 19 out of 29 (66 per cent) were educated at private, fee-paying schools and 19 out of 29 (66 per cent) are Oxbridge graduates.

Is this a Cabinet guided by the national interest or vested interests? Not since the days of Harold Macmillan in the late 1950s has Britain been governed by politicians representing such a narrow social base. And Supermac and his millionaire colleagues at least believed in the universal welfare state. Cameron and his rich chums, in contrast, are engaged in a war on welfare.
In June, the Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith (net worth: £1m) used an interview with the Sunday Telegraph to urge jobless people to move in order to find work ("Coalition to tell unemployed to 'get on your bike'", was the headline). In September, Osborne (£4.6m) castigated benefit claimants for making a "lifestyle choice". Earlier this month, the Culture Secretary, Jeremy Hunt (£4.5m) told poor families to have fewer children.

Are we really "all in this together"? The Department of Education, for example, has cancelled the building of 400 playgrounds. But how will that affect, say, the Cabinet Office minister Oliver Letwin (£1.6m), who has his own tennis court at his home in Somerset? The Department for Culture has scrapped free swimming for children and pensioners, describing it as a "luxury". Why should that concern the Transport Secretary, Phillip Hammond (£7.5m), who has a swimming pool at his mansion in Surrey? The Department of Transport is relaxing the cap on rail fares, which is expected to lead to fare increases of 10 per cent a year for the next four years. But how will that bother the Chancellor, George Osborne (£4.6m), who once claimed £440 from the taxpayer for a chauffeur-driven car to take him from his Cheshire constituency to London?
Plutocracy extends far beyond the cabinet table. The Topshop boss, Philip Greene (£4.4bn), whose wife lives in the tax haven of Monaco, has been put in charge of cutting government "waste". The former BP chief executive, Lord Browne (£45m), has been appointed as the lead non-executive on the Cabinet Office board. The banker Stephen Green (pension pot: £19.1m), outgoing chairman of HSBC, is to join the coalition as a trade minister in December. National interest or vested interests?

Outsourced Britain

Meanwhile, the millionaire cutters in government have been able to call on the support of their multimillionaire friends in the corporate world. In the run-up to the Spending Review, the Daily Telegraph published a letter from 35 senior business leaders backing the Chancellor's spending cuts and assuring readers that they would "deliver a healthier and more stable economy".
One of the signatories was Ruby McGregor-Smith (salary: £1.1m), chief executive of the outsourcing company Mitie, whose annual report for 2010 notes: "The public sector faces the prospect of considerable pressure on expenditure in the coming years. We believe that this will create significant opportunities for the outsourcing market as contracts will tend to become larger and broader in scope . . . we believe that in subsequent years we will benefit from the efficiency agenda that is expected to impact central and local government." National interest or vested interests?

To point out that Cabinet ministers will be largely untouched by the cuts that they are introducing, or that austerity measures could enrich their private-sector pals, is neither "class war" nor the "politics of envy". The financial crash transformed public attitudes towards the privileged and the wealthy; the undeserving rich. I suspect voters will not stomach a diet of cuts, cuts, cuts imposed by millionaire ministers and backed by corporate barons and bonus-rich bankers. Britain is not France. Yet.

Mehdi Hasan, New Statesman

ConDem numpty reveals half a million job cuts

Danny Alexander, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, unwittingly disclosed the full scale of the expected redundancies when he was photographed yesterday reading confidential briefing papers.

The documents showed that the independent Office for Budget Responsibility is likely to forecast 500,000 public sector workers will lose their jobs because of the cuts, the biggest in public spending since the Second World War.

Tens of thousands of officials in departments across Whitehall will be offered redundancy in the coming weeks under Coalition plans to cut more than £80 billion in public spending over the next four years, reports The Telegraph.

Britains Shock Doctrine

By George Monbiot October 18, 2010

The economic crisis is the disaster the Conservatives have been praying for. Now they can reshape the economy on corporate lines.

We’ve been staring at the wrong list. In an effort to guess what will hit us tomorrow, we’ve been trying to understand the first phase of the British government’s assault on the public sector: its bonfire of the quangos. Almost all the public bodies charged with protecting the environment, animal welfare and consumers have been either hobbled or killed. But that’s only half the story. Look again, and this time make a list of the quangos which survived.

If the government’s aim had been to destroy useless or damaging public bodies, it would have started with the Commonwealth Development Corporation. It was set up to relieve poverty in developing countries, but when New Labour tried, and failed, to privatise it, the CDC completely changed its mission. Now it sluices money into lucrative corporate ventures, while massively enriching its own directors. Private Eye discovered that in 2007 this quango paid its chief executive just over a million pounds. The magazine has also shown how the CDC has become entangled in a series of corruption cases. Uncut. Unreformed.

The same goes for the Export Credit Guarantee Department. The ECGD effectively subsidises private corporations, by underwriting the investments they make abroad. At one point, 42% of its budget was spent on propping up BAE’s weapons sales. It also pours money into drilling for oil in fragile environments. A recent court case showed how it has underwritten contracts obtained with the help of bribery. Uncut. Unreformed.

The Sea Fish Industry Authority exists “to help improve profitability for the seafood industry”. Though it is a public body, all but one of its 11 directors work for either the fishing industry or food companies. They seek to “promote the consumption of seafood”, to “champion the industry in public debates” and to “influence the regulatory process” in the industry’s favour. Uncut. Unreformed.

Can you see the pattern yet? Public bodies whose purpose is to hold corporations to account are being swept away. Public bodies whose purpose is to help boost corporate profits, regardless of the consequences for people and the environment, have sailed through unharmed. What the two lists suggest is that the economic crisis is the disaster the Conservatives have been praying for. The government’s programme of cuts looks like a classic example of disaster capitalism: using a crisis to re-shape the economy in the interests of business.

In her book The Shock Doctrine, Naomi Klein shows how disaster capitalism was conceived by the extreme neoliberals at the University of Chicago. These people believed that the public sphere should be eliminated, that business should be free to do as it wants, and almost all tax and social spending should be stopped. They believed that total personal freedom in a completely free market produces a perfect economy and perfect relationships. It was a utopian system as fanatical as any developed by a religious cult. And it was profoundly unpopular. For a long time its only supporters were the heads of multinational corporations and a few wackos in the US government.

In a democracy under normal conditions, those who were harmed by abandoning public provision would outvote those who gained from it. So the Chicago programme couldn’t be imposed in these circumstances. As the Chicago School’s guru, Milton Friedman, explained, “only a crisis – actual or perceived – produces real change.” After a crisis has struck, he added later, “a new administration has some six to nine months in which to achieve major changes; if it does not act decisively during that period, it will not have another such opportunity.”

The first such opportunity was provided by General Pinochet’s coup in Chile. The coup was plotted by two factions: the generals and a group of economists trained at the University of Chicago and funded by the CIA. Their ideas had already been comprehensively rejected by the electorate, but now the electorate was irrelevant: Pinochet used the crisis he had created to imprison, torture or kill anyone who dissented. The Chicago School policies – privatisation, deregulation, massive tax and spending cuts – were catastrophic. Inflation rose to 375% in 1974; the highest rate on earth. Even so, Friedman insisted that the programme was not going far or fast enough. On a visit to Chile in 1975 he persuaded Pinochet to hit much harder. The result was a massive increase in unemployment and the near-eradication of the middle class. But the very rich became much richer, and the corporations, scarcely taxed, deregulated, fattened on privatised assets, became much more powerful.

By 1982, Friedman’s prescriptions had caused a spectacular economic crash. Unemployment hit 30%; debt exploded. Pinochet sacked the Chicago economists and started re-nationalising stricken companies, whereupon the economy began to recover. Chile’s so-called economic miracle began only after Friedman’s doctrines were abandoned. The Chicago School’s catastrophic programme pushed almost half the popultaion below the poverty line and left Chile with one of the world’s highest rates of inequality.

But all this was spun by the corporate media as a great success. With the help of successive US governments, similar programmes were imposed on dozens of countries in which crises ensured that the population was unable to resist. Other Latin American dictators copied Pinochet’s economic policies, with the help of mass disappearances, torture and killings. The poor world’s debt crisis was used by the IMF and the World Bank to impose Chicago School programmes on countries that had no option but to accept their help. The US hit Iraq with economic shock and awe – privatisation, a flat tax, massive deregulation – even as the bombs were still falling. After Hurricane Katrina wrecked New Orleans, Friedman described it as “an opportunity to radically reform the educational system”. His disciples immediately moved in, sweeping away public schools while the residents were picking up the pieces of their lives, replacing them with private charter schools.

Our crisis is less extreme, so, in the United Kingdom, the shock doctrine cannot be so widely applied. But, as David Blanchflower warned yesterday, there’s a strong possibility that the cuts programme will precipitate a bigger crisis: “it’s a terrible, terrible mistake. The sensible thing to do is to spread [the cuts] over a long time”. That’s another feature of disaster capitalism: it exacerbates the crises on which it thrives, creating its own opportunities.

So we shouldn’t wonder that 35 corporate executives wrote to the Telegraph yesterday, arguing, just as Milton Friedman used to do, for a short, sharp shock, before the window of opportunity closes. The policy might hit their profits for a while, but when we stagger out of our shelters to assess the damage, we’ll discover that we have emerged into a different world, run for their benefit, not ours.

www.monbiot.com

First our compensation scheme, now appeals rights.

Amongst the so called and much derided Quangos cut last week by the ConDems was the Civil Service Appeals Board.

The CSAB was last reviewed in 2007 where the need for its role was assessed in line with the requirement for employers to provide an internal appeal process against dismissals. The view at that time was that the CSAB should continue to play an important, independent role.

It seems that this government has decided otherwise. So along with mere inflationary pay increases, and our long standing Compensation Scheme, we have now lost a right to appeal dismissals. Of course we have... as, "we are all in this together", after all!

Housing benefit landlords are ripping off the system

Private landlords will pocket almost £8.5bn from the taxpayer this year through housing benefit - more than a third of the total £21.5bn bill, according to figures from the Department for Work & Pensions (DWP).

In the past decade, the cost of providing housing to claimants through the private rented sector has soared by 36pc above the rate of inflation to £5,720. Other providers of social accommodation have raised their charges by just 19pc over inflation to £3,991. Lord Freud said: "This confirms what we have long suspected, that some unscrupulous landlords are charging benefit claimants over the odds to make a quick buck at the expense of the taxpayer."

This amounts to nearly to a £4 billion plundering by the private sector of public funds. To put that into perspective, thats almost the entire amount IDS wants to save by removing incapacity to work benefit from the sick and disabled.

I guess we are "all in this together", unless of course "we" are private landlords and bankers.

Or the tax avoiders and evaders who trouser £120 billion a year in uncollected tax. To put that in context, thats nearly the entire national defecit! On the bright side the ConDems are proposing to tighten up some loopholes in the system that they say will gather in £7 billion, or about a 5% target. In reality all that will happen is that the PAYE system will be tweaked, at great expense and benefit to some shoddy American company, to ensure that salaried staff are kept tightly controlled. In the meanwhile the usual suspects, one of whom was described on Have I Got News For You as a "Greedy, fat s***", will go on shipping vast quantities of wealth abroad, untouched by the revenue.

Since when were we "all in this together"?

33 Chilean miners rescued

The branch and its membership breathed a sigh of relief that was shared around the world when the last of the Chilean miners were brought safely to the surface.

24 hour news coverage followed every twist and turn in this amazing story over the past few months. Significantly though, there has been barely a word said about the real truth of mining in Chile today.

In this year when these 33 miners have been resued, another have 39 died virtually unreported (about average for a year in a Chilean mine.) Hundreds more suffer life altering injuries or are afflicted with life threatening conditions. The health and safety record in these, indeed this very mine are appalling. Additionally, trades unionists are routinely persecuted if they campaign for safety improvements.

On the upside the Chilean president, who has made great political capital from this event, has pledged improvements to mining safety. That is nice, especially as he is one of the billionaire mine owners in Chile!

Hewlett Packard to cut 1,300 UK jobs

Computer giant Hewlett Packard (HP) is to cut a further 1,300 jobs in the UK and switch work overseas.

The cuts, which come on top of up to 900 job losses announced in June, were immediately attacked by Unite as "butchery" of the company's UK workforce while the jobs were exported to different locations abroad.

Nearly 4,000 jobs have now been shed at HP in the UK over the past two years, with the figure now set to rise to nearly 6,000 by next April, Unite said.

Peter Skyte, Unite national officer, said staff morale had hit rock bottom following "quarter after quarter" of redundancy rounds. "It is becoming impossible for the workforce to work while they have an axe continuously over their heads," he said. "Morale has slumped and it is affecting productivity."

He added: "Lax employment protection in the UK compared to other European countries means that the UK is bearing the brunt of the cuts, as it's quicker and cheaper to sack UK people and export their jobs abroad."

The world's leading personal computer manufacturer announced in June plans to cut a further 9,000 jobs worldwide as it made a $1bn (£680m) investment in fully automated data centres, although the full impact on UK jobs was not known until Monday.

Mr Skyte said: "It's not exactly a recipe for efficiency and productivity. It's been nearly five months between the worldwide announcement and the [latest] UK one."

Unite refused to rule out strikes over the latest job cuts. HP staff who are members of the PCS union and working on government contracts walked out on a two-day strike in March this year in a row over job security and pay. Mr Skyte said: "All action will be considered including industrial action."

Alex Lock, an employment partner at Beachcroft law firm, said HP was acting within the law when it came to moving the jobs offshore. "Lots of companies are basically shipping off some parts of their basic workforce functions to countries like India and Africa."

He added the trend had "accelerated" during the recession as businesses were under pressure to cut costs. "You can get people there [overseas] to do essentially the same tasks, or provide the same technical facilities, but pay them a 10th of what you'd pay them over here."

Last year HP cut more than 700 jobs in the UK as part of a worldwide reduction of 5,700 workers. The job losses were on top of the company's previous plan to reduce its global headcount by 24,600 and shrink its wage bill by 5pc.

Bankers expect billions in bonuses

More than half of Britain's bankers are expecting their bonus cheques to rocket – in some cases by up to 70pc.

Two surveys conducted by eFinancialCareers.com and Morgan McKinley show that despite a clampdown on pay by global regulators City staff are still placing orders at their local Porsche dealership in expectation of bumper cash bonuses.

Last week's report by the Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR) suggested those in the financial sector would receive nearly £7bn in bonuses this year.





Here we go again!

Very angry man claims £4 billion savings...

...by making sick people work, or lose their benefits.


Meanwhile his very wealthy mates avoid, evade or just not pay £120 billion a year in uncollected tax.


That is 30 times more than he hopes to save by cutting sickness benefits to the least able.

The banks are being taxed a mere £1.7 billion as a levy this year.

I guess some are more "in this together" than others.

Also, the day before yesterday the Equality and Human Rights Commission's report How Fair Is Britain? showed a widening wealth gap, with the top 10 per cent of households worth an average £853,000 – 100 times higher than the poorest decile.

Obviously, rewards cannot be equal, but nor is it fair that those on lower incomes suffer more crime, worse health and die up to seven years sooner.

Read more here.

Updated statement on the civil service compensation scheme

Union opposes Government's divide and rule tactics

The national executive committee met on 7 October to consider an offer from the Cabinet Office on changes to the Civil Service Compensation Scheme (CSCS).

The NEC decided that, in its present form, the offer does not protect the accrued rights of sufficient numbers of our members and is not acceptable. We have called on the Minister for the Cabinet Office, Francis Maude MP, to enter into further talks in order to find an agreement with the Council of Civil Service Unions (CCSU). We believe an agreement is possible.

Disgracefully, some other unions representing a minority of staff have collaborated with the Government in attempting to divide the CCSU at a time when we are faced with the prospect of massive job cuts. These unions have entered into a separate agreement with the Government, even whilst CCSU discussions were taking place. The government’s planned cuts make this a vital issue concerning members’ livelihoods, and the minority unions’ actions are a matter of the utmost seriousness. We have demanded that the Minister returns to talks to find an agreement with the CCSU.

The other unions have, very regrettably, lent the government a veneer of respectability in its attempts to make it easier and cheaper to sack tens of thousands of civil and public servants.
PCS will continue to carry out a parliamentary campaign to stop the Government’s legislation on the CSCS, and will take further legal action at the appropriate time.

Ballot

The NEC has agreed that, in the event that any further negotiations prove to be unsuccessful, or the Cabinet Office refuse further talks, a membership ballot will be conducted to seek members’ approval for rejection of the offer based on the union’s policy, the judicial review and the potential for further legal action.

The root cause of the problem is government’s determination to both save money by cutting accrued CSCS rights and move ahead with large scale redundancies within a tight cost framework imposed by the Treasury. The NEC decided that the policy ballot on the CSCS will also be an opportunity to seek members support for our national campaign to defend jobs, pensions, pay and public services.
Background: negotiations

Following the union’s legal victory in the High Court earlier this year, talks have been taking place between the Cabinet Office and the Council of Civil Service Unions (CCSU) to see if agreement could be reached on a new compensation scheme.

The PCS position has been clear: that we wish to negotiate to reach agreement, but any agreement should be fair to all parties, recognise the accrued rights held by many civil service staff and be fair to new entrants to the civil service.

However, whilst claiming they wanted to proceed by agreement with all unions, the government stated their clear view that the scheme quashed by the High Court was ‘over generous’ and that they intended to introduce a Bill into Parliament to cap CSCS payments.

This Bill would slash members’ existing entitlements and accrued rights. It would include capping all compulsory redundancies at a maximum of 12 months pay and limiting payments for voluntary exits to 15 months salary. In addition, they have said they would seek to make changes to the 1972 Superannuation Act to remove the basis on which we were able to win the judicial review on the compensation scheme.

The talks with the Cabinet Office have therefore been conducted under the threat of legislation: the government has attempted to use the Superannuation Bill as a blunt bargaining tool to influence the negotiating process.

The offer

The offer contains only marginal improvements on the proposed legislation and drastically cuts members’ existing entitlements. The cap on voluntary severance has been increased to 21 months, and the underpin for the lowest paid to 90% of average pay. There is no protection, transitional or otherwise for accrued rights. In addition, the proposal go beyond the Superannuation Bill or indeed the 1972 Act in proposing changes to notice periods, the Protocol and the scope for redeployment across departmental boundaries.

In considering the offer, the test PCS has used has been a practical one – how many of our members, particularly the lower-paid – are protected by the proposals. The last scheme, with an underpin of £60,000 and a cap of two years, was rejected as our estimate was that it only protected 50% of our members.

The new offer is worse. The absence of any form of underpin to allow people to earn more than 21 months, or transitional provisions or reserved rights to protect accrued rights, means that the proposals will be detrimental to the majority of our existing members earning more than £20,000 with accrued rights to 2 years or more service. This will particularly affect a large number of our E.O. or equivalent grades.

Moreover, the offer seeks to change the period of notice of those in a compulsory redundancy situation from six months to three, and to reduce the timescales for efforts at avoiding redundancy set out in the agreed Protocols.

The new offer does incorporate a different way of protecting the lowest paid by providing for a notional salary for those below 90% of the median (as defined) or £23,000 – whichever is the greater. This is an improvement for many of the lowest paid. PCS has welcomed this as part of the package – whilst arguing for a higher median figure.

The areas of concern lie particularly in relation to the cap and the protection of accrued rights. The absence of an underpin at previously discussed levels, or any reserved rights or transitional protections, leaves many worse off than their accrued rights. This is significant not only because of the Judicial Review ruling but also in relation to any potential legal case. In reaching agreement we would forgo our right to take legal action.

The NEC decided that, in its present form, the offer does not protect the accrued rights of sufficient numbers of our members and is not acceptable, and to call on the Minister for the Cabinet Office, Francis Maude MP, to enter into further talks in order to find an agreement.

Minority unions allow Tories to divide CCSU

On 24 September all the unions that make up the CCSU formally agreed that an offer made at that time by the government was not acceptable and informed the Minister of that position in a meeting on 28 September. However, it transpired that five other unions - Prospect, FDA, POA, Unite and GMB, representing a minority of civil servants - had already written to the Minister offering to come to an agreement on terms based on the Cabinet Office offer. PCS represents more than double the civil and public servants than the other five minority unions combined, and represents the people who would be affected by job cuts and redundancy. Nevertheless, at the meeting with the CCSU on 28 September, the Minister declared that he would seek an agreement with the five minority unions and break off talks with the CCSU.

A final offer was made on 5 October with a deadline of noon on 7 October for acceptance. PCS argued that the CCSU should respond and meet to discuss the offer. The Cabinet Office informed PCS that the five minority unions had already agreed the offer.

Earlier, the Treasury had intervened to impose a cost envelope – a total amount of money that would set the parameters of any agreement. The details have not been explained. We believe, however, that the costs have been calculated on the basis of the large numbers of jobs the government plans to cut.

Nevertheless, PCS was prepared to find an agreement and wrote to the Minister to inform him of this. However, a parallel process involving the five minority unions had clearly been taking place, including secret meetings with Cabinet Office officials. The Minister replied to PCS on 6 October to say that the government had concluded negotiations with the five unions.

The POA has now issued a statement denying that it has been party to any agreement. The Government has therefore misled staff and the unions in claiming such an agreement.

It is very regrettable that PCS finds it necessary to issue such a condemnation of other unions. But in order to build the unity we need to defend members from attacks, such as these cuts in redundancy pay, and the massive job cuts planned by the government, we must make clear to members and reps the way in which the minority unions have allowed the Tories to divide the CCSU and to readily agree a scheme which is only marginally different from the Government’s Bill yet gives up members’ rights.

Unity needed

The central element of our national campaign to defend jobs, pensions and public services is the building of unity with other unions, and community groups, across the public and private sectors. To date, PCS has played a leading role in bringing unions together to campaign against the Coalition’s cuts. We will continue to do so.

Mark Serwotka
General secretary

The truth about the cuts/deficit

The Chancellor, George Osborne, in perhaps the most disingenuous and immature section of his speech on Monday, deliberately mischaracterized the two sides of the deficit argument when he said:

"There are two sides to this argument.
On one side there is the IMF, the OECD, the credit rating agencies, the bond markets, the European Commission, the Confederation of British Industry, the Institute of Directors, the British Chambers of Commerce, the Governor of the Bank of England, most of British business, two of our great historic political parties, one of the Miliband brothers, Tony Blair, and the British people.

On the other side is Ed Miliband and the trade union leaders who put him where he is."

No, George, on the other side are:

* Barack Obama
* Ben Bernanke
* Tim Geithner
* Paul Krugman
* Joseph Stiglitz
* George Soros
* Richard Freeman
* Robert Reich
* Brad DeLong
* David Blanchflower
* Martin Wolf
* Samuel Brittan
* Anatole Kaletsky
* Robert Skidelsky

For a longer list of leading economists (including other Nobel prize-winners and other ex-members of the Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee) who back the Ed Miliband/trade union position on slower, less draconian cuts, see this letter in the Financial Times from February this year.

As for invoking the support of the "British people", a recent Populus poll found that only one in five voters, 22 per cent, agreed with the coalition plan to deal with the deficit by 2015.

Oh, and on a side note, I must point out that Osborne's "backers" include most of the institutions which failed to foresee the financial crash and the recent recession - the Bank of England, the ratings agencies, the IMF, etc. Typical...

Mehdi Hasan, New Statesman, 6th October 2010

Cameron caves in to Fox...

...so reports the Guardian today

In a letter to Cameron leaked last week to the Daily Telegraph, Fox warned the cuts would be devastating. "Party, media, military and the international reaction will be brutal if we do not recognise the dangers and continue to push for such draconian cuts at a time when we are at war," he wrote.

Fox, who has met the prime minister since the leak, is confident the Treasury accepts that his budget will have to be cut by less than 10%. This could be fantastic news for SPVA who were expecting anything up to 30% cuts to be imposed as a result of the Defence and Security and the Public Spending Reviews

Read more here.