NIPSA News September/October

NIPSA NEWS THE NEWSPAPER OF THE LEADING PUBLIC SERVICE TRADE UNION

Ex-Health Minister slammed over AfC pay – See page 4

Members angry over recruitment and promotion comps suspension – See page 5

September/October 2014 Tel: 028 90661831 www.nipsa.org.uk

People power needed to combat Fracking menace in Northern Ireland – See pages 10/11

Which is better – tax free childcare or vouchers?

– See page 14

Cuts attacked as Universal Credit in disarray – See page 20

NJC members set to strike on Oct 14

WELFARE CUTS LIES EXPOSED NIPSA members working in Local Government, Education, Libraries, Housing and the Youth Justice Agency as well as traffic attendants will join Unite, GMB and UNISON members in taking a second day of strike action on October 14 to demonstrate their outright opposition to the 1% pay offer tabled by the NJC Employers’ Side.

On September 12, a lobby, in-

volving all the unions, was held at the Northern Ireland Local Government Employers (NILGA) Executive Committee.

Addressing the meeting, NIPSA Deputy General Secretary Alison Millar set out why it was of paramount importance that the Executive Committee backed the call for the reopening of negotiations.

Continued on Page 3

Fourth year round of cutbacks are deepest

IN RECENT weeks, some local politicians have blamed renewed cuts across the public sector in Northern Ireland on the non-implementation of the UK Government’s welfare reform measures.

It is important to remember that this year’s 2014/2015 public expenditure settlement for Northern Ireland was always going to be the most difficult.

The four-year settlement set out by the UK coalition government in its first budget after the 2010 election back-loaded the cuts in Northern Ireland.

While we have experienced significant and damaging cuts since then, the financial allocation for Northern Ireland in the financial year 2014/15 was substantially less than in the first three years of the four-year spending review period.

The table (right) is based on figures provided to NIPSA by the Department of Finance and Person-

nel in 2010. It is clear that the plan was to involve additional cuts of around £863m for Departmental Expenditure Limits and cuts of around £538m in Capital Expenditure – both these figures represent real-terms change to take account of the normal inflationary pressures.

£m

Cumulative 2011-12 2012-13 2013-15 2014-15 Real Change

Current -237.9 DEL Capital -342.7 DEL

-447.4 -647.2

-415.9 -527.3

-863.7 -2196.1

-538.2 -1,824.1

While some marginal adjustments were made to these financial allocations as a result of the Chancellor George Osborne’s 2013 Autumn Statement and the 2014 UK Budget, the fundamental point is

that the UK government’s austerity policies were always going to move to a new level this year and that explains why most government departments and public bodies are reaching crisis point with their finances.

The Department of Health, Social Services and Public Safety have identified a £120m shortfall to maintain services at the current level and to provide adequate levels of service provision a figure of £400m has been mentioned.

Other departments – apart from the Department of Education – are having their budgets cut by 2.1% in the June 2014 monitoring round. These cuts are to all public services operating within the remit of the parent civil service department and are not confined to the Northern Ireland Civil Service budgets themselves.

Continued on Page 2

Visit http://www.nipsa.org.uk AND give a like to our Facebook page and follow us on Twitter @nipsa

Facing the coming storm

Page 2 NIPSA NEWS

NIPSA members and all who work and rely upon public services face a major assault by the UK Coalition Government virtually immediately and over the next three to four years.

If the cuts go ahead as planned then public services and public sector employment will be unrecognisable with massive job losses and cuts to services.

By the end of this financial year between £4bn and £5bn will have been removed from the Northern Ireland Block Grant. The worst of these cuts will take place this year – 2014/2015 – and the signals being picked up

by NIPSA representatives are causing grave concern.

Already in the Northern Ireland Civil Service, the planned Grade 7 and Executive Officer 2 promotion competitions have been pulled. In Health and Social Care Trusts, attacks on pay and terms and conditions of employment are being developed with the Western Trust filling any vacancies on a 35hour week basis. New and current staff taking these positions at the Trust are having their hours of work cut.

News

Editorial

The prospects of a decent pay increase for public servants after years of pay stagnation will diminish once again.

But the future looks even more grim. The budget for 2015/2016 will involve further cuts to the Northern Ireland Block Grant of 1.6% in real terms and this is on top of the misery that will be experienced by April next year.

Although no budget has been set for the years after the 2015 UK General Election, the Office for Budget Responsibility is predicting additional real-term cuts in public spending of 13.3% across the UK by 2018/2019.

Northern Ireland will be expected to shoulder its share of the burden and that means poorer and less public service provision, devastation of jobs in both the public and private sectors and a bleak future for the vast majority of citizens.

NIPSA and the trade union movement will play its part in defending public services and protecting public service workers and we all face a tough struggle. But we also expect that those who have been elected to serve and represent the interests of Northern Ire-

www.nipsa.org.uk

land’s citizens will step up to the plate and tell the UK government of millionaires that its austerity is ripping out the heart of Northern Ireland and threatening its future.

More than that, we expect the Northern Ireland Executive and Assembly to make it as difficult as possible to thwart the brutal austerity of the Westminster elite and that means mobilising the whole population in opposition to these cuts in addition to encouraging their colleagues in Wales and Scotland to form a devolved regions campaign of opposition to austerity.

Shortly after the UK Government launched its four-year austerity budget, the First and Deputy First Ministers signed a statement with their Scottish and Welsh counterparts exposing the impact of austerity on their populations.

This needs to be revisited – but this time with a determined plan of action to prevent the destruction of our public services and our economies.

Brian Campfield, General Secretary

WELFARE CUTS LIES EXPOSED Continued from Page 1

wealthy and to deregulate the economy, the financial sector in particular.

The cuts are separate from the cut of £87m The deregulation of the finance sector conwhich is the amount of the reduction which will tributed substantially to the financial crisis of be required if welfare reform is not implemented.

2008/2009 and the subsequent near economic It is important to note that the reason for the collapse. The current UK coalition has used this existing cuts listed above arise exclucrisis as a smokescreen to push even NIPSA wil sively from the implementation of the further these objectives and the 2010 fourth year of the UK coalition governpublic spending settlement reflects the campaign ment’s austerity plan following the 2010 escalation of that attack on public servelection budget and public sector ice spending and provision. against spending settlement.

This is the real explanation for the Since the Conservative/Liberal Demo- austerity current crisis faced by Northern Ireland crat Coalition Government was formed government ministers and departments measures and and the real backdrop to the current after the May 2010 Westminster election, Northern Ireland will have experirows among the political parties in privatisation Northern Ireland. enced public spending cuts of around £4 billion in real terms. This is the realInstead of the in-fighting, bickering of services ity we are faced with. and point-scoring, it would be more apIt is important to put the current attack on pubpropriate if all parties in the Northern Ireland Exlic services, public sector employees, pay, penecutive recognised the need to campaign sions and social security in the right context. against the UK government’s austerity proSuccessive Conservative governments have, gramme and pushed opposition to this agenda since the election of Margaret Thatcher in 1979, on the political front. set out to remake UK society and to overturn the In this way the people of Northern Ireland post-war consensus on economic and social pol- would be served much better by our political sysicy. tem. Such a strategy by the Northern Ireland ExThe central objectives were, among other ecutive would provide the basis for a united things, to shrink the “state” – i.e. to slash spendapproach involving all the political parties at ing on public services, to privatise public assets, Stormont – something which would undoubtedly industries and services, to weaken the trade be welcomed and supported by the community unions as the only force standing in the way of generally. this reactionary and anti-working class agenda, NIPSA, for its part, will continue to oppose the to reform the taxation system to favour the out-workings of the anti-working class austerity

NIPSA NEWS

NIPSA Harkin House, 54 Wellington Park, Belfast BT9 6DP, Tel: 028 90661831 Fax 028 90665847 or email: alison.millar@nipsa.org.uk Editorial contact details: Bob Miller email: bob.miller@nipsa.org.uk Correspondence should be sent to the above address.

Unless otherwise stated, the views contained in NIPSA NEWS do not necessarily reflect the policy of trade union NIPSA.

agenda; we will continue to defend public services and our members’ interests as best we can and we will campaign against the privatisation of services that seek to bolster the profit margins of the big corporations and the private for-profit sector.

As a union we will oppose We have no reductions in the social security safety net system, as is choice...but the purpose of the so-called welfare reform programme, to take a because these changes imstand for a pact negatively on our members and their families, fair and especially those in low and middle-income categories as decent well as the unemployed, the sick and the disabled. society It is essential that branches actively recruit non-members into the union in order to strengthen our capacity to defend public services and our members’ interests.

The interests promoting this attack on those public provisions know that they have to further undermine the trade union presence in the workplace in order to achieve these despicable goals.

We all have a responsibility, therefore, to build opposition to this agenda and this means building the union.

We don’t have any choice and we are determined to take a stand for a fair and decent society and against any attempts to destroy our public services and the civilised values that they represent.

Concern over £29m cut to DSD budget

NIPSA has voiced “extreme concern” over a Ministerial announcement that the Department of Social Development is to face budget cuts of £29 million in the current financial year.

The union is to meet with DSD officials to establish the potential impact these cuts will have on frontline services and on members.

According to NIPSA, the cuts are being introduced against the backdrop of Welfare Reform.

NIPSA is strenuously opposed to the reform pro-

gramme and believes there will be a significant weakening of the local economy if it is introduced.

A spokesperson told NIPSA News: “The union’s understanding was that budgetary cuts were always going to be more severe in the fourth year of the Comprehensive Spending Review, and therefore responsibility for these cuts is in our view as a result of the austerity programme.The planned cuts are not as a result of Welfare Reform.”

NJC members set to strike on October 14

www.nipsa.org.uk

Page 3 NIPSA NEWS

News

Continued from Page 1

Addressing the meeting, NIPSA Deputy General Secretary Alison Millar set out why it was of paramount importance that the Executive Committee backed the call for the reopening of negotiations.

She told members of the Committee: “The strike on July 10 and the further strike called by all NIJC/NJC trade unions is a manifestation of the anger and frustration felt by public sector workers who have had a sustained and systematic attack on their living standards which seems to have no end in sight.

“UK Ministers have again indicated in the past few weeks they wish to impose further public sector pay restraint – or cuts, in our world – until at least 2018.

“As local government employers, it is imperative that you do not follow suit and impose further restraint

NIPSA members during the July 10 strike

by the award of a paltry or no pay increase on the people who work in local government – the refuse collectors, the street cleaners, the environmental health officers, building control officers, registration staff, those who work in our libraries, deliver housing services and who support our children’s education such as school secretaries, caretakers, classroom assistants, education welfare officers – the list goes on.”

Ms Millar insisted that these were vital public services that “must be maintained” and pointed out that the staff who delivered these services deserved “a decent and fair wage increase”.

She continued: “As one of the 11 regions which make up the Employers’ Side of the NJC, I would implore you to give a fresh mandate to the Employers’ Side to get back round the negotiating table to seek to resolve this pay dispute – with the flexibility to get into real and meaningful negotiations – to deliver a pay increase which would restore some of the losses our members have suffered in the last four years.”

Ms Millar added: “Remember the Trade Union Side claim was for £1 per hour – this is still the claim – is realistic and affordable.”

Arguing that the “wage robbery” inflicted upon NJC workers was

being compounded by financial pressures faced in wider society, she cited a claim by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation that living costs had risen 25% in the past five years.

Such rises had placed an unprecedented financial burden on the poor and working poor alike with childcare costs rising by 37%; food costs up 24%; energy costs up 39% and transport costs increasing by 30%.

Ms Millar said: “NJC members deliver vital public services and it is unrealistic of employers to expect staff to continue to deliver these services against the backdrop of a 18% pay cut in real terms (see table below).”

You can download the table here: http://www.nipsa.org.uk/NIPSA/m edia/NIPSA/PDFs/WIW/NJC_NILGOSC/NJC_Pay_Table.pdf

Organise to protect services, jobs, pay and pensions

YOU HAVE A ROLE TO PLAY...SUPPORT YOUR UNION AND YOUR COLLEAGUES

EX-HEALTH MINISTER ATTACKED OVER AfC PAY DECISION

Page 4 NIPSA NEWS

NIPSA has attacked former Stormont Health Minister Edwin Poots (pictured right), over this refusal to make a declaration or offer on Health Service pay.

It follows the publication of the NHS Pay Review Body’s report in March which recommended a 1% pay increase as well as the payment of increments.

Subsequently, UK Government Health Minister Jeremy Hunt intervened and indicated that the recommended increase would not be paid. Instead a 1% non-consolidated pay rise would be given only to those at the top of their pay band. Those on below the maximum of their pay band would just receive their increment.

Deputy General Secretary Alison Millar told NIPSA News: “The situation in Northern Ireland is that tthe then

News

Health Minister Edwin Poots has refused to make any offer or declaration on Health Service pay. This is totally unacceptable and thE former Minister was playing politics with Health Service members’ pay.”

“We will now take this issue up immediately with newly DUP appointed Health Minister Jim Wells.”

It is understood NIPSA’s Health Central Panel have agreed to hold a series of workplace meetings with members to explain in detail the background to the issue as well as to outline NIPSA’s response with a view to carrying out a statutory industrial action ballot in October.

You can download the table here: http://www.nipsa.org.uk/Where-I-Work/Health/Circulars/Agenda-for-Change-Pay

www.nipsa.org.uk

www.nipsa.org.uk

Widening pay gap between top bosses and their staff

UK’s top bosses are paid around 131 times more than their average employee, an analysis by the High Pay Centre think tank shows.

The analysis of FTSE 100 companies shows that the ratio of chief executive to average employee pay has widened dramatically in recent years. In 1998, the average FTSE 100 chief executive was paid 47 times the average employee.

The pay gap is highest at public relations and advertising company WPP. Its chief executive, Martin Sorrell, enjoys a pay package worth a whopping £29.8million — 780 times more than that of his average employee.

The pay ratio was above 400 at three other companies — clothing retailer Next, catering group Compass and hotel, restaurant and coffee shop owners Whitbread — and above 300 at four more.

Other notably high ratios include that at G4S, which benefits from around £700 million in government outsourcing contracts. Its chief executive, Ashley Almanza, has a £2 million pay package, 266 more than the average G4S employee.

Commenting on the figures, High Pay Centre director Deborah Hargreaves called on the government “to take more radical action on top pay to deliver a fair economy that ordinary people can have faith in”.

“Britain’s executives haven’t got so much better over the past two decades. The only reason why their pay has increased so rapidly compared to their employees is that they are able to get away with it”, Hargreaves said.

Analysis from the High Pay Centre has also shown that the average pay of a FTSE 100 chief executive has rocketed from around £1 million a year in the late 1990s — about 60 times the average UK worker — to closer to £5 million today, more than 170 times average pay.

Anger as recruitment and promotion comps are suspended

Page 5 NIPSA NEWS

News

FRUSTRATION and anger has been voiced by members to branch representatives and NIPSA Headquarters staff after it become know that NICS management intended to announce the suspension of a number of competitions.

The union was told on September 16 that this involved in particular the general service Grade 7 and Executive Officer II promotion competitions and the Staff Officer Accountant recruitment competition through the Department of Finance and Personnel HR. The union was also told the Executive Officer I promotion competition – which is well advanced – is to be completed.

However, as NIPSA News goes to press, it remains unclear whether any appointments are to be made from that competition.

NICS management has indicated that the suspension will remain in place for the foreseeable future.

In a response, NIPSA pointed out

that budget pressures, claimed by management to underpin the decision, had been known for some time.

The union also expressed concern that the Departments had only recently backed NIPSA position that the anticipated Executive Officer II competition should be internal.

According to Assistant General Secretary Kieran Bannon, this clearly demonstrated “the need to be in a supply position at this grading level exists”.

He told NIPSA News: “The blow being dealt to Administrative Officers is therefore compounded as it was recently announced that after years of external recruitment, this EOII competition was to be internal.

“It is also extremely disappointing that staff still going through the interview process in the Executive Officer I competition currently under way are expected to do so, with the real threat of no appointments being made.

“Another point of contention is the fact that the NICS is in the process of

conducting a Fast Track Graduate recruitment exercise. If it proceeds this will provide an opportunity for the graduates to progress to Grade 7 level, an opportunity now being denied to existing staff. This is a particular issue NIPSA will wish to address with NICS Management.”

It is understood NIPSA believed Trade Union Side should have had the opportunity of making representations on the issue through the Central Whitley machinery.

Mr Bannon added: “Unfortunately NICS management decided to proceed with the announcement despite that request. Members’ anger and frustration has been demonstrated through contacts made with both NIPSA Headquarters and many branch representatives.

“NIPSA will be pressing for an urgent Central Whitley meeting to raise our concerns about what has just been announced and how the matter has been handled by NICS management.”

DEL employment law review – changes outlined

DEPARTMENT of Employment and Learning Minister Stephen Farry has now signalled that he intends to bring forward legislation to the Assembly that will see changes to employment law in Northern Ireland.

It follows the completion of an earlier public consultation on the issue.

Most of Mr Farry’s proposed changes present no problem to trade unions, but it is clear they will campaign against one proposal in particular – the cut in required consultation from 90 days to 45 days for employers declaring redundancies in excess of 100.

The employers have also been seeking an increase in the qualifying period for claiming unfair dismissal while the trade unions have been opposing any dilution of the rights of workers.

Mr Farry has let it be known that he intends to retain the qualifying period for claiming unfair dismissal at one year. It is currently two years in Great Britain and there is no doubt that the employers’ organisations will continue to lobby for this provision to be brought into line with Great Britain.

Other proposed changes include: Protected conversations: This provision, already introduced in GB, allows employers to enter into without prejudice discussions with employees about a range of issues, including performance, without these conversations being able to be quoted at subsequent tribunal proceedings. Thus the term ‘protected conversations’. Following representations from the trade unions, protected conversations will not be introduced in Northern Ireland.

Fees: There will be no proposal to introduce fees for employees initiating tribunal proceedings. This has been recently introduced in GB and has resulted in a substantial reduction in the number of cases being lodged, in so doing discouraging employees from asserting their rights as well as reducing the prospects of any redress against injustices perpetrated by employers.

Consultation period involving collective redundancies of more than 100: This is to be reduced from 90 days to 45 days.

It is proposed that tribunal claims should be automatically rerouted to the Labour Relations Agency (LRA) to encourage

conciliation: This is not regarded as a controversial issue but additional staff may be required by the LRA. NIPSA will need to consider if this initiative will have any impact on members working in the Office of the Fair Employment and the Industrial Tribunals.

Early neutral evaluation: This involves an early assessment of the merits of a claim and indications to tribunal claimants about the likelihood of success if this is self-evident. It is not clear whether this ‘early neutral evaluation’ would be done by tribunal chairs or by LRA staff, but this would be a matter for further consideration.

Transfer of Undertaking (Protection of Employees) TUPE: Currently the NI TUPE legislation is superior to its GB counterpart. This is due to the fact that changes to TUPE that have been introduced in GB since devolution in Northern Ireland have not been applied here because employment matters are now devolved. This issue is currently under consideration by Mr Farry but ICTU has already voiced its opposition to any dilution of TUPE regulations.

Zero-hour contracts: This consultation was due to close at the end of September and ICTU has submitted its views. One of the issues that may be brought forward is the right of a zerohour contract employees to request a normal contract after a specific period if certain conditions are met. ICTU is pressing for restrictions on the use of these types of contracts and associated abuses by employers.

The draft legislation will be introduced in the Northern Ireland Assembly, subject to agreement within the Executive, in spring 2015 with the intention that the legislation will come into effect in 2016 before the next Assembly election.

NIPSA, through the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, has been lobbying hard to ensure that there is no diminution of the rights of workers and while these efforts have been largely successful, there are still elements of the Minister’s plans which represent an attack on workers’ rights and which will continue to be opposed by the trade unions.

It has been made clear to the Mr Farry that ICTU will be making representations to prevent the reduction in the consultation period required where redundancies of over 100 are planned by employers.

Momentum builds over super-councils

Page 6 NIPSA NEWS

www.nipsa.org.uk

News

WITH the local government elections now in the past and the new shadow councils starting to hold regular meetings, momentum is building as April 1, 2015 approaches and the switch over to the 11 new councils.

The Local Government Reform Joint Forum met in late August working through a number of important staffing matters. These included: 1. Updating of the RPA staff severance scheme for local government The RPA Severance Scheme for Local Government (the scheme) was agreed by the Joint Forum and issued as Circular LGRJF/05 in April last year.

The Local Government Act (NI) 2014, Section 123 requires the Department of the Environment to make regulations for paying compensation for the loss of office or a

cut to earnings.

The Department has indicated that the LGRJF scheme will be the basis for the statutory regulations, which are required under Section 123.

At a meeting on August 27, the Joint Forum agreed it was important to ensure the scheme was up to date in relation to employment/age legislation and approved minor amendments to the scheme so that it can be promulgated by way of statutory regulations. The amendments approved were to: l Ensure that the draft regulations reflected the updated scheme that the title of the scheme was amended to reflect the new legislative status; l Revise the scheme to take into account the Local Government Pension Scheme Regulations (NI) 2014 which come into effect from April 2015;

l Deletion of the tapering provision and a related reference to a ‘Default Retirement Age’ (contained in 2.8 of the scheme); l Deletion of reference to Transition Committees/Statutory Transition Committees; and l Deletion of the requirement to use a standard approval form.

The DOE will shortly formally consult on the draft regulations that will provide for the scheme on a statutory basis.

2. Filling posts in new organisations Following the issuing of the LGRJF procedures in late June, a briefing session for HR and TUS representatives is scheduled for October 1, 2014.

3. Consultations The Forum is currently consulting on (i) Revised Local Government Staff Code of Conduct and Protocol, (ii) Proposals for payment of relo-

cation expenses and (iii) a suite of initial policy documents e.g. discipline.

4. Group staff It was agreed that there was an urgent need to have final determination on the future of the group structures and to receive details on how staff will be dispersed to the 11 new councils.

5. Staff Transfer Scheme The NICS scheme was noted and the Local Government scheme has been passed to the DOE to ensure all 11 councils must comply with it.

It is hoped the NIHE scheme will be available for the October meeting of the LGRJF. 6. Forum Work Plan A revised work plan was agreed which provides for the prioritisation of new Industrial Relations machinery to come into effect on April 1, 2015.

TTIP is a toxic treaty

Reprinted below is the introduction to a new pamphlet, titled Stop the TTIP, written by Frank Keoghan and published by the Dublin-based pressure group People’s Movement. It sets out how the Proposed Transatlantic Trade & Investment Partnership (TTIP) will attack workers’ rights, erode social standards and environmental regulations, dilute food safety rules, undermine regulations on the use of toxic chemicals, rubbish digital privacy laws, and strangle developing economies.

BILATERAL trade and investment agreements have emerged as instruments for entrenching and expanding corporate power at the expense of democratic rights and the rights of workers.

An expanding web of regional and bilateral agreements has been built on World Trade Organisation rules to construct, layer upon layer, investment regimes that enforce the right of corporations to pursue maximum profit while undermining and removing restrictions that seek to regulate corporate activities in the areas of public health, workers’ and consumers’ health and safety, public services, and the environment.

Some of these agreements are deliberately and misleadingly packaged as free-trade agreements. They have conferred on transnational capi-

tal new powers to directly challenge the democratic right of governments to regulate and to legislate in the public interest. The latest proposed treaty instrument to embody these investor ambitions is the EU-US trade deal now known as the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), the launch of which was announced by Barack Obama in February 2013.

The primary aim of the TTIP is not to stimulate trade through removing tariffs between the EU and the United States but to remove regulatory “barriers” that restrict the potential profits to be made by transnational corporations on both sides of the Atlantic.

Yet these “barriers” are in reality some of our most prized social standards and environmental regulations, such as labour rights, food

safety rules, regulations on the use of toxic chemicals, digital privacy laws, and even new banking safeguards introduced by the EU to prevent a repeat of the 2008 financial crisis. The stakes, in other words, could not be higher In addition to this deregulation agenda the TTIP also

seeks to create new markets by opening up public services and government procurement contracts to competition from transnational corporations, threatening to introduce a further wave of privatisation in such crucial areas as health and education.

Most worrying of all, the TTIP seeks to grant foreign investors a new right to sue sovereign governments before ad hoc arbitration tribunals for the loss of profits resulting from public policy decisions.

This “investor-state dispute settlement” (ISDS) mechanism elevates transnational capital to a status virtually equivalent to that of a sovereign state, and threatens to undermine the most basic principles of democracy in EU member-states. The TTIP is therefore not a negotiation process between two competing trading blocs but anat-

tempt by transnational capital to open up and deregulate markets on both sides of the Atlantic.

The treaty is being negotiated under conditions of the strictest secrecy. Corporations draft and share the negotiating texts, but citizens are denied access, in the name of national security.

On the basis of leaked texts, however, we know that they would build on existing trade and investment rules by incorporating the most toxic elements of the thousands of existing treaties and granting expanded powers to transnational capital to challenge public-interest policies and practices, eliminating or putting at risk rights for which workers and trade unions have struggled over many decades.

Read the full pamphlet at http://www.people.ie/economy/ttip.pdf

Costly ESA fudge dressed up as an achievement

www.nipsa.org.uk

NIPSA Assistant Secretary Paddy Mackel has claimed that – after the squandering of millions of pounds and nearly seven years of deliberation over the setting up of a single education body to replace the existing five Education and Library Boards (ELBs) and Staff Commission – that a “fudge has been agreed, dressed up as an achievement”.

He told NIPSA News: “After wasting many millions on trying to reach political agreement on establishing a single Education and Skills Authority (ESA), defeat has finally been acknowledged.

“But, in what citizens have come to expect from local politics, a fudge has been agreed, dressed up as an

OUR present constitutional settlement is not merely unacceptable; it is broken, writes New Statesman editor Jason Cowley, In the days after 5 September, when a poll put Yes Scotland ahead for the first time in the referendum campaign, we witnessed something remarkable, even unprecedented, in recent decades – the British political elite scrambling in panic as they belatedly understood that the ground beneath them was moving and drastic action was required. In response they began making policy on the run, hastily promising further powers to Scotland and mobilizing whatever forces they could, especially big business, to help pull the Union back from the brink.

Had Scotland voted Yes, David Cameron would surely have been forced to resign as the prime minister who lost Scotland and presided over the break up of Great Britain.

Ed Miliband, the Labour leader, might well have been forced to stand down as well in what would have been an ensuing constitutional crisis.

In the event, Scotland narrowly voted No and now an opportunity exists to reconfigure the multinational United Kingdom to the benefit of all of us living in these islands.

Clearly the status quo is unacceptable, not only to the large number of people in Scotland who voted for independence. Our present constitutional settlement is not merely unacceptable; it is broken, as David Cameron acknowledged when he spoke outside Downing Street once

Page 7 NIPSA NEWS

News

Community division in education ‘imbedded for at least another generation’

achievement.

“Hundreds of staff have already been cut from the five ELBs, with the increasing pressures this has brought on remaining staff.

“The Voluntary Grammar and Integrated Sector will remain outside of the control of the single Education Board. CCMS, which provides support to the maintained school sector, rather than being subsumed into a single authority will remain on the

outside, only to be joined by another new body to provide support to the Controlled School sector.”

And posing the question, “Is this progress?”, Mr Mackel continued: “The same issues arise for members moving from their current employer to a new employer, in terms of protecting their existing terms and conditions, pay and pensions.

“Other issues may also arise if there are attempts to regionalise particular services. Vacancy Control also remains an important issue for many staff.”

He added that the union would be seeking an urgent meeting with the Department and employers to discuss these issues “which require negotiated agreed outcomes for

members”.

Pointing out that it had taken seven years and several hundred redundancies to “achieve” an agreement on a single Education Board, he said it had allowed the “elitist grammar sector” to “remain aloof from the rest of society”.

The outcome had, he argued, “imbedded community division in education provision for at least another generation”.

Mr Mackel continued: “Political agreement has been reached at the expense of many children in working class communities and has made shared education and the vision for a shared future to be nothing more than a pipe dream.”

the final result was known. Whether the UK is reconfigured as a fully federal or quasi-federal state, something fundamental has to change and will change. We are entering a period of profound constitutional upheaval.

It will not be enough to offer more devolution to Scotland as the three main party leaders did in the final, desperate days of the campaign, however inchoate. The question of devolution in England has to be addressed as well. Cameron spoke of the need to address the West Lothian question – English votes on English laws - but should we have an English parliament or perhaps the introduction of regional assemblies under a new federal structure?

Cameron did not mention this but the House of Lords needs to become a fully elected second chamber or be abolished altogether.

What too of further powers for Wales and Northern Ireland? These are momentous times.

One of the most startling interventions during the final days of the campaign was made of course by Gordon Brown, the former Labour prime minister, who returned dramatically to frontline politics as the cross-party Better Together campaign floundered. In a series of speeches, consciously echoing Gladstone, he promised “home rule for Scotland”, even if there was no consensus on what was actually being offered and how it would affect the other nations in these islands, not least England.

At times it seemed as if the former

Labour prime minister was dictating policy to his successor, who, because of the decisive defeat of the Conservatives in Scotland, was rendered virtually mute during the long campaign and was left at the end pleading plaintively with Scots “not to go”. It was desperate stuff and one expects Cameron’s party to punish his weakness in the months ahead.

What we witnessed in Scotland during the campaign, especially in those final weeks, was an extraordinary democratic awakening. An ancient nation was asking fundamental questions about identity, purpose and sovereignty, and people were as animated as they were well informed. The SNP operates a formidable and disciplined campaigning machine but Yes Scotland amounted to much more than Alex Salmond and his happy band of followers; it was a broad, vibrant coalition of pro-independence groupings.

What the referendum campaign demonstrated was that, in the right circumstances and when people believe that something truly significant is at stake and that their vote matters, they care passionately. At a time when fewer and fewer of us are members of political parties, nearly 4.3 million registered to vote, 97 per cent of those eligible. Overall turnout was 86 per cent, testament to a nation’s engagement and a direct challenge to a broken political system.

But how now to capture and harness the energies that were unleashed during a referendum campaign in Scotland that shook the foundations of the British state, stunned a complacent elite and came so close to shattering the 307-year-old Union?

And this much I know: unless there is far-reaching constitutional reform, there will be a second Scottish independence referendum before too long.

Scots say ‘naw’ to independence

Living Wage wou NI employment b

Page 8 NIPSA NEWS

www.nipsa.org.uk

News

THE idea of a ‘living wage’ is gathering momentum in many parts of the world. It is conceived and measured as a wage rate which is adequate to meet the needs of workers and their families in a given society at a given time.

But affordability of life for workers is one thing – what about affordability for companies and employers? Would the application of a ‘living wage’ across the economy lead to businesses closing or jobs being lost or young people failing to find employment?

The answer depends on what level of increase is required to reach a ‘living wage’ (and how the latter is measured) as well as how different impacts play out in the economy with gains and losses added up.

Clearly, it is not possible to be certain or precise about the impact of any change in the cost of labour. But, estimates can be made and last week a significant report on this very question was launched by the Northern Ireland Council for Voluntary Action (NICVA). The research was undertaken by Oxford Economics and published as a report of the Centre for Economic Empowerment at NICVA. The full report, entitled An Economic Analysis of the Living Wage in Northern Ireland, can be downloaded here: www.nicva.org/sites/default/files/d7content/attachmentsresources/nicva_living_wage_2014_0.pdf.

The Report finds net employment and output gains and a boost to the Northern Ireland economy. There follows, below, a brief summary of some of the key issues in defining and measuring a ‘Living Wage’ followed by a summary of the key findings of the Oxford Economics Report. I also raise some questions about how this research might be extended and used by policy makers.

What, Why and How much?

First, what is a living wage and how is it measured? In a previous blog on this site I have invoked the idea of a ‘wage rate that is adequate and appropriate to enable people to live with dignity in today's society’. But, how do we know what is an adequate wage rate and how is this applied to different household types in different places? Much research has been conducted both in the United Kingdom as well as, recently, in the Republic of Ireland.

See, for example, the research work of the Vincentian Partnership: www.livingwage.ie/ In the U.K. as in the Republic of Ireland, the measure of a ‘living wage’ is with reference to hourly rates of pay and on the assumption that the worker works full-time. In the U.K. the measure is differentiated between London and outside London and refers to a blended average for the main household types (distinguishing by number of adults and children).

The more recent work by the Vincentian Partnership in the Republic of Ireland has examined different household types but is focussed especially on a living hourly wage rate for single workers. This figure is currently at €11.45 per hours (above the national minimum wage (NMW) in the Republic is currently €8.65 per hour). In the U.K. the ‘Living Wage’ rate is £8.80 in London and £7.65 outside London (including Northern Ireland). The UK NMW is currently £6.31 for those aged 21 and over). Further information is available: www.livingwage.org.uk/ Clearly, nobody is suggesting that a ‘living wage’ rate as measured by employee pay per hour is the full story. Hours of work, access to continuous employment, maternity leave, pension contributions and benefits, paid holiday leave, sickness benefit are all crucial to what might be regarded as a decent work package commensurate with the skills, capacity and needs of the worker.

The State, in any society, has an important role in providing for the needs of workers and their families through the tax and welfare system as well as through regulation and legislation. However, employers are also responsible in paying wages and offering employment conditions that are fair and affordable. There is a rising concern about precarious work, exploitation and freeriding on internship schemes as socially corrosive developments in the new, global and local labour markets.

Can employers afford to pay living wages?

A good question. Enterprises and employers vary hugely depending on the line of economic activity, the size of the enterprise and the state of the

By Tom Healy (Nevin Economic Research Institute)

market for goods and services in any particular sphere. Some companies are in a position to pay higher wages, some are not. The research evidence in the USA and in the UK is mixed and inconclusive at worst and mildly reassuring at best that the introduction or raising of the NMW is not negative in relation to employment levels (see references to this research in a previous blog: www.nerinstitute.net/blog/2014/01/09/a-serious-challengethat-businesses-and-the-govern/).

A statutory national minimum wage (NMW) is used in many parts of the world to provide a floor of decency below which employers cannot go (even if legally they can in specific circumstances claim inability to pay). This should not be confused with a ‘living wage’ which is typically above the NMW. A process of moving wages up from the statutory minimum to what is regarded as a ‘living wage’ may be the subject of negotiation or, in specific sectors and cases, a regulation under a Wage Board or Regulated Employment Agreement/Joint Labour Committee in the case of the Republic.

Northern Ireland has the highest concentration of low-paid workers in Britain or Ireland.

The Oxford Economics (OE) Report estimates that there were 173,000 low paid workers (below the Living wage rate of £7.20 in 2012) in Northern Ireland in 2012. This accounted for 23% of all employees. Cross-UK comparisons show Northern Ireland as having the highest proportions of low pay. See here [See, also, Chart below] . An interesting finding of the OE Report is that there were an estimated 40,000 jobs sustained as a result of public sector procurement (purchase of construction services, medical supplies, energy, etc.) of which 35% were estimated to be earning less than the ‘Living Wage’ My colleague Paul MacFlynn has already outlined the extent and distribution of low pay in Northern Ireland (Hours and Earnings in the Northern Ireland Labour Market). In summary low paid workers are heavily concentrated among the following groups or sectors: l Young l Female l Low-skilled (below GCSE A*) l Sales and customer service occupations l Retail, Accommodation and Food sectors

Chart:

Percentage of earners below Living Wage by UK Region 2013

And what impact would paying a living wage have on jobs, businesses and the local economy?

Five channels of impact were identified by Oxford Economics: 1. Reduction in employment by firms.

2. Reduction in labour costs by firms cutting back on the wages of higher paid workers or curtailing hours of work.

3. Absorption of wage increases through a reduction in profits of firms.

ld raise y 2,500 www.nipsa.org.uk

4. Passing on of cost of wage increases to consumers through price increases.

5. An increase in productivity arising from higher wages (via employee morale for example).

Which of these five impacts will dominate is an empirical question and is likely to vary by sector and firm distinguishing between the composition of trading as well as structure of firm costs and profits. For a review of the literature see the NERI Working Paper by my colleague Micheál Collins ('The Impacts and Challenges of a Living Wage for Ireland'). He cites the work of Matthew Pennycock (2012) among others (What Price a Living Wage?

Understanding the impact of a living wage on firm-level wage bills).

Here is a flavour of some of the estimated impacts of an uplift to a living wage increase in the case of Northern Ireland from the OE Report:

£221 in additional wages

An uplift to the living wage would impact on an estimated 173,000 workers (and their families) and, on the assumption of no behavioural change, would increase the total Northern Ireland wage bill by £221 million (or just over 1% of the total). About £100 million of this would be in the Wholesale and retail trade along with Accommodation and Food.

Up to £88 million in additional Exchequer revenue

In addition, it is estimated that the U.K. exchequer would benefit by way of additional taxes and national insurance contributions as well as lower inwork benefits as a result of paying the living wage or higher to all workers.

The estimated additional revenue is put at £88 million. However, this figure could be less depending on possible impacts of higher wages on company profitability and corporation taxes paid.

£132 million in additional consumption

Disposable income would be boosted by an estimated £133 million, 99% of which is likely to be consumed rather than saved.

Gross Value Added (close to local GDP) would be boosted by an estimated £84 million.

While overall employment would rise by between 1,200 and 2,500 when job losses are netted out.

Implications for policy and further research

The research work undertaken by Oxford Economics proves that, notwithstanding the severe data limitations at a macro-economic and firm level for Northern Ireland, estimation of possible or likely impacts of a wage increase are possible using Input-Output models. It would be greatly helpful if such Tables were available to researchers from a timely supply of official statistics.

Policy and implementation

A record number of people are looking for extra hours to top up their wages

Page 9 NIPSA NEWS

News

The determination of the National Minimum Wage is a matter for the UK Government acting on the advice or information provided by the UK Low Pay Commission. There is a case for raising the NMW not least because low pay is a problem across all UK regions and recent trends suggest a pattern of falling average real wages across the UK which is impacting on equality and a broad-based economic recovery. There may be scope at regional level such as in Northern Ireland to provide ‘local solutions’ along some of the following lines: 1. Implementation of the ‘living wage’ at local council level in regards to procurement.

2. Establishment of appropriate negotiation structures at sectoral level especially in those sectors where low pay is heavily concentrated.

If there is a general positive case for greater devolution of powers to the UK regions let’s remember that wages combined with upskilling and organisational transformation are key to successful local economic regeneration not a self-defeating (in the longrun) competition to out-do other regions by cutting corporation tax and thus deprive the regions of their revenue capacity to provide public services and goods.

THE number of people who are under-employed has increased by nearly 100,000 over the last two years, according to new analysis published by the TUC in September.

The analysis shows that while unemployment has fallen by over 400,000 since early 2012, under-employment has risen by 93,000. And at 3.4 million the current level of under-employment is over a million higher (46 per cent) than it was before the recession.

The TUC analysis of the Labour Force Survey shows that across the UK the number of people who count as under-employed – people working parttime because they can’t get a full-time job, or wanting more hours in their current job – has increased for both employees and the self-employed.

While there has been a small recent fall in involuntarily parttime work (people working parttime because they can’t get a full-time job), the TUC analysis reveals that a rise in the numbers who want more hours in their existing jobs means that under-employment is still increasing.

The fastest rise in under-employment over the past two years has been among self-employed workers. There has been a seven per cent (36,000) increase in the number of self-employed people who class themselves as under-employed compared to a two per cent rise (57,000) for employees.

The TUC says the analysis shows that despite talk of a recovery, continual real wage falls mean that more people than ever are looking for extra hours to make ends meet. Since the government came to power in 2010 under-employment has increased by nearly half a million (432,000) and shows little sign of slowing.

Northern Ireland has seen the sharpest increase in under-employment since the last election with a 37 per cent rise, followed by the East of England (up 25 per cent), Wales (up 21 per cent) and the North West (up 18 per cent).

Under-employment has also gone up significantly in the North East (16 per cent), South East (up 14 per cent), East Midlands (up 11 per cent) and South West (up 10 per cent) since 2010.

TUC General Secretary

Frances O’Grady (pictured above), said: “Ministers have made much of the improving jobs figures as a sign that all is now well with the economy. But although unemployment is falling, there are still nearly 3.4 million people who would like to be working more hours than they are.

“With more jobs being created, you’d expect that underemployment would be on the wane too. But sadly with parttime, temporary, low-paid jobs often the only work that people can get, under-employment remains stubbornly high and is still rising.

“As the squeeze on pay continues, many people don’t have enough money for everyday essentials, let alone the cash to cover any unexpected emergencies. With no let up in their financial woes in sight, people are understandably looking to take on more hours just to keep the wolf from the door.

“In the last two years the number of people who say they need more hours has increased by 100,000. Without a decent pay rise and the creation of more permanent, secure jobs, underemployment is unlikely to fall any time soon.”

Page 10 NIPSA NEWS

Nearly half of MPs oppose £100k wages for charity chiefs

ALMOST half of MPs think it is "unacceptable" for charities to pay staff more than £100,000 a year, new research has shown.

A survey of 154 MPs by the consultancy nfpSynergy found that 47 per cent said they thought it was definitely or somewhat unacceptable for a charity to pay some of its staff more than £100,000 a year; 35 per cent said they thought it was acceptable.

Half of the Tory MPs polled thought it was unacceptable for charities to pay more than £100,000 a year and 38% of Labour MPs felt the same way.

Seventy-eight per cent of MPs polled said they thought salaries of more than £200,000 a year were unacceptable; 13 per cent said they were acceptable.

Third Sector’s State of the Sector survey, carried out with nfpSynergy earlier this year, found that 38% of charity employees felt charities should not pay more than £100,000 a year, compared with 47% who thought it was acceptable.

The survey of MPs, carried out in July, found that 52% of them were against charities being allowed to pay their trustees, compared with 23% who thought it was acceptable.

It also found that 89% of Tory MPs thought it was acceptable for charities to provide front-line services instead of the government, compared with 56% of Labour MPs polled.

Only 5% of Tory MPs said this was unacceptable, compared with 30% of Labour MPs. Tim Harrison, head of professional audiences at nfpSynergy, said it was encouraging that 35% of MPs thought it was acceptable for charity chief executives to be paid more than £100,000, given the scrutiny that charities have faced over executive pay.

We need peop power to comb Fracking mena News

THE recent report, Assessment for DecisionMakers - Scientific Assessment of Ozone Depletion: 2014 by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and world meteorological Organization (WMO), has indicated that the world is going through unprecedented increasing climate change.

The report set out how chemicals used as substitutes for harmful man-made CFCs (chlorofluorocarbons) are contributing to global warming emissions growing at a rate of about 7% annually. It is this conflict between the profit-driven demand for more energy and the impact it has on our fragile environment that has saw governments world-wide looking for a new answer to the ever-increasing demand for energy.

In Britain, energy consumption has stayed constant over the past 30 years as many of our consumable products are imported, while the demand for energy in developing countries has skyrocketed as their economies grow.

Environmental scientists continue to raise concerns that increasing concentration of greenhouse gases has led to a global temperature rise with results that could be catastrophic for humanity.

Worldwide, big energy companies continue to only

www.nipsa.org.uk

have one goal in relation to energy production: short term supply and higher profits, resulting in 87% of our energy is produced by burning non-renewable fossil fuels – primarily oil, gas and coal –which all generate carbon dioxide.

Oil companies drilling offshore are now moving into deeper and more dangerous waters. The irony of increasing global warming is the effect of melting the polar icecap. This is opening up the Arctic’s huge oil and gas fields for exploitation that will mean further catastrophic increases in global temperatures.

Across Britain natural gas is the second biggest source of energy after oil, but those supplies are running out. In 2011, gas imports exceeded home production for the first time. The new cure-all for these problems of supply for big business and governments is the process of Hydraulic fracturing or ‘Fracking’.

Fracking is the process of drilling and injecting fluid into the ground at high pressure in order to fracture shale rocks to release natural gas inside.

Information gathered from gas exploration companies about the process of Fracking is frightening.

Each gas well requires an average of 400 tanker trucks to carry water and supplies to and from the

site. It take each fractu with sand Approxim used per fr Fracking fl ins such a radium, me formaldehy well where to crack, c into the we During th icals have and contam reported th higher in d than in nor There ha cases acro areas of ga respiratory gested con Only 30% the rest of not biodeg

Fracking been reje environm scientist unions an socialist the devas of the loc environm

mentalist s to the deva health risk in mass ca forcing gov and Asia to some case In Britain evidence o private firm after initial and a real The Nort giving licen

ple bat ance www.nipsa.org.uk

es 1-8 million gallons of water to complete uring job. The water brought in is mixed and chemicals to create Fracking fluid. mately 40,000 gallons of chemicals are racturing. Up to 600 chemicals are used in luid, including known carcinogens and toxlead, uranium, mercury, ethylene, glycolethanol, hydrochloric acid and yde. The mixture reaches the end of the e the high pressure causes the shale rock reating fissures where natural gas flows ell. his process, methane gas and toxic chembeen found to leach out from the system minate nearby groundwater. It has been hat methane concentrations are 17 times drinking-water wells near fracturing sites rmal wells. ave been more than 1,000 documented oss the US of water contamination next to as drilling as well as cases of sensory, y, and neurological damage due to inntaminated water. %-50% of the fracturing fluid is recovered; the toxic fluid is left in the ground and is gradable. The waste fluid that is drawn back up to the surface is left has in open air pits to evaporate, ected by releasing harmful VOCs organic compounds) mentalist (volatile into the atmosphere, creating ts, trade contaminated air, acid rain, and ground level ozone. nd In the end, hydraulic Frackts due to ing produces approximately station 300,000 barrels of natural gas a day, but at the price of cal numerous environmental, safety, and health hazards. ment Across the world, Fracking has been rejected by environscientists, trade unions and socialists due astation of the local environment and the s to the public at large. This has resulted ampaigns of opposition, in many cases vernments across the Americas, Europe o place moratoriums on Fracking and, in es, outright banning. n, the Tory Government has ignored the of the negative impact of Fracking allowing ms to begin gas exploration; this is even exploration triggered minor earthquakes risk of ground water pollution. thern Ireland Assembly have followed suit, nces to private exploration companies

Page 11 NIPSA NEWS

News

Anti fracking demo in Belcoo, Fermanagh, earlier this year

without any real consultation with local communities or consideration of the over-whelming negative evidence. This has resulted in a number of anti-Fracking groups being established across Northern Ireland from Fermanagh to the north coast of Antrim.

So far anti-Fracking groups across Fermanagh have led the way as the county was the first that was going to see hydraulic fracturing carried out on a massive scale. The Fermanagh anti-Fracking groups organised a coordinated and highly-effective campaign that was able to force the Assembly Executive to scrap the Fracking multinational Tamboran’s licence for drilling in Fermanagh. This was achieved through mass public campaigning work across Fermanagh in towns and villages.

There was also a political response with the standing of Fermanagh Against Fracking candidate and UNITE representative Donal O'Cofaigh in the local council elections receiving 8.2% of the vote.

This election campaign activated hundreds of local working class people to politically campaign against Fracking putting immense pressure on the Assembly Executive.

But the Assembly Executive have not abandoned the use of Fracking across the North as they have given licences to Fracking companies such as Infastrata, a self-proclaimed petroleum exploration company, who have no track record of drilling as they have yet to drill a single well.

The proposed site Infastrata want to carry out a test well is on Woodburn Glen near Carrickfergus.

This is a three acre publicly-owned plot of land which connects to four reservoirs that supply drinking water to Carrickfergus, Newtownabbey and North Belfast homes.

Again there was no public consultation or democratic decision making on What is needed giving the licence to this inexperienced venture-capitalin order to ist company. The local peacefully group, Protect our Coast solve issues and Glen, have begun to mount a serious campaign relating to of opposition to this test energy well. production, NIPSA has made its posiconsumption tion clear on the process of hydraulic fracturing as deleand the gates representing more environment, than 46,000 members voted is to break with overwhelmingly in support of the logic of an anti-Fracking motion at the NIPSA General Confergreed and profit ence this year.

The newly-formed General Council has openly supported genuine anti-Fracking campaigns and pledges whatever support NIPSA can offer to these groups. What is needed in order to peacefully solve issues relating to energy production, consumption and the environment, is to break with the logic of greed and profit; and inject serious public investment into renewable energy resources along with public research and funding programmes into recycling, climate change and energy efficiency.

It is now an urgent task facing environmental activists, socialists and the trade union movement to build a people power campaign which can block this toxic industry. l Pat Lawlor is a member of NIPSA’s General Council

NHS BREAK-UP IS

Page 12 NIPSA NEWS

News

www.nipsa.org.uk

The Con-Dem government is accelerating the process of contracting-out commercially attractive NHS services which will compromise clinical quality, writes JOHN LISTER

AUGUST is normally a quiet month for NHS news but as the pace of the gathering crisis in the NHS hots up, August 2014 brought a whole host of issues into focus, illustrating the gathering crisis and the madness of the competitive market system created by the Tory Health and Social Care Act. The big question is the burgeoning deficits in almost half the 140 trusts.

The Health Service Journal calculates that the deficits in 66 trusts add up to nigh on £1 billion and it will be little comfort to the bosses, staff and patients in the cash-strapped trusts to hear that in 68 other trusts, modest surpluses are expected, totalling just £167 million — and even these may be overoptimistic projections.

It’s these pressures, plus the growing chasm between frozen NHS budgets and the growing demand for healthcare from a growing population with an increasing proportion of pensioners, that is driving the motley but in essence fundamentally similar “reconfiguration” plans in localities up and down the country.

They all start from the same basic premise — a projected cash gap by 2018-19 that calls for urgent action and demands that “no change is not an option.”

They then offer fundamentally similar proposals to close or downgrade A&E departments, centralise specialist services and cut beds.

All of this is carefully obscured by a smokescreen of barely relevant waffle about improving public health, reducing smoking and obesity, delivering “care closer to home” and the need for greater “integration” of the NHS with the equally cash-strapped social care services run by local government.

Every one of these plans claims indignantly that

it is “clinically led” and masquerades behind a happy-clappy and completely inappropriate title such as “Shaping a Healthier Future,” “Healthier Together” etc.

Many such plans are now at least partly in the public domain, although few have been accepted by the public, who quite rightly view with extreme suspicion anyone proposing to close trusted, accessible and popular local facilities and replace them with services “centralised” miles away, backed up by the vaguest promise of an undefined future alternative system which may or may not eventually be established “in the community” or “closer to home.”

Some plans are now coming to a head, and just beginning to face the anger of local people.

In west London, where this nonsense has been going on now for a couple of years, Imperial Healthcare Trust plans this month to close Hammersmith Hospital’s A&E service on the same day as the neighbouring Central Middlesex Hospital slams the door shut on its A&E. The closures are being driven through despite the complete failure to implement grand promises of alternative services “in the community” or to expand bed numbers by the required amount in either St Mary’s Hospital — for Hammersmith — or Northwick Park, where an addition of 22 beds is well short of the peak levels of admissions at Central Middlesex.

Central Middlesex, the closest hospital to Wembley stadium, will be left with an “urgent care centre” that is run not by the NHS but by for-profit Care UK and, like all urgent care centres, it accepts only the most minor cases, with no beds. Patients requiring any serious treatment will need to travel elsewhere. Hammersmith patients will have a temporary choice of diverting to Charing Cross Hospital,

until that too is axed.

Imperial plans to close and demolish Charing Cross, along with its top-performing stroke unit.

The majority of the site is to be sold off to developers, according to plans unveiled to horrified locals, plans which blatantly flout the findings of the Independent Reconfiguration Panel, which insisted that the full range of emergency services must remain at Charing Cross until genuine alternative services have been put in place.

In Lincolnshire, where health bosses plan to save £105m by 2018, one proposal which will give most concern is the idea of a single main A&E department to serve the whole sprawling county with notoriously lousy roads, in place of the current three A&E units (Lincoln, Grantham and Boston).

This solitary A&E would apparently be supported by a number of “A&E Locals/A&E care centres,” although the Lincolnshire Health and Care plan stresses that “an A&E Local does not have beds.”

Given this misleading language, it will be of little comfort to Boston residents to be assured that their local hospital has no plans to close its “A&E.” Shropshire too is another rural county planning to reduce to just a single A&E, in Shrewsbury, leaving those with serious health needs in Telford to travel up to 20 miles for treatment.

In Bedfordshire and Milton Keynes, clinical commissioning groups are working together to develop cash-cutting proposals that seem set to downgrade Bedford Hospital, but which could also downgrade Milton Keynes.

The two hospitals are 19 miles apart — but for residents of either town to travel to another major hospital would be a journey of 23 miles or more.

An angry meeting in Bedford in early August indicates that the fight against this is now on, even before the selected options are revealed.

An 'NHS Tax' is not the answer, cl

Reports suggest that Labour is considering hypothecated national insurance increases to pay for additional NHS spending during the next parliament. I have to admit I am disappointed. Hypothecation makes no sense to me. Hypothecating national insurance makes even less sense. I need to explain why.

First, and very obviously, there is a problem with NHS funding. The Institute for Fiscal Studies suggest that in real terms NHS spending per head of population may fall 10% this decade, and when age weighted it might be even more extreme. The idea that NHS spending is, as a consequence, being ring fenced and protected is, just wrong and a complete political misrepresentation of the truth. It is important to note this in the context of what follows: I do not think this cut in spending appropriate, and I would wish the NHS to be protected from such cuts, as I would wish other areas of government spending to be protected because I believe they all represent social need. As a consequence, please do not think that in writing this I am saying that I support cuts: far from it.

That said, the proposal to increase National Insurance for the purpose of paying for the NHS is another wholly misleading political message representation that plays on the belief that many people have that National Insurance either pays for pensions, or the NHS, or both, when in fact none of these things is true. National Insurance is, for all intents and purposes, just another tax. According to this year’s budget National Insurance will raise about £110 billion this year whereas the cost of the NHS will be £140 billion and the state pension over £100 billion. Quite clearly National Insurance Contributions (NIC) can’t cover all this.

But there is something more important to realise about National Insurance, which is that it is a deeply regressive tax for two reasons. The first is that National Insurance charge on employees falls from a rate of 13.8% to just 2% when earnings exceed £41,865 a year. This means that as earnings rise above this point the overall percentage rate of contribution paid by a higher earning employee falls as a part of income.

Secondly, National Insurance is regressive because it only applies to earned

income. That means that if a person can live off investment earnings, or they can recategorise their earnings as investment income, as many self-employed people do by recording their income through a company and then pay themselves dividends, then national insurance is not paid and this has the result of making this particular tax in some part in voluntary, and in another part a tax only on labour, and not on capital. Both factors suggest that that the tax is already deeply unfair when every member of society benefits from the tax paid.

If, therefore, any tax was to be hypothecated, National Insurance is definitely not the one to use.

That said though, I have a real problem with hypothecation in any event.

There are, as is usually the case with me, a number of reasons for this but the most important one by far is that, as a matter of fact, governments do not raise tax for its own sake. They have only ever, throughout history, raised tax because they wish to spend. It makes no sense to raise tax for its own sake: that process would simply take money out of the economy for which a government was responsible to make everyone worse off (which is also why running budget surpluses is also quite illogical). Given that running a tax system always gives any government grief, no one would do it just to make their population worse off, and so it is only the act of spending that justifies taxation.

The supposed philosophy of a hypothecated tax is, however, that a government cannot spend until it can raise money, but in fact this is the wrong ordering of events. Again, throughout history, governments have proved that they can spend without raising taxation. They can borrow, of course (and the present government has turned this into an art form) and they can print money, as the UK government did from 2009 to 2012, during which period it issued debt of £426 billion and repurchased about £375 billion of debt, meaning that in net terms it borrow just £51 billion, and effectively printed money to cover the rest.

Hypothecation, then, denies this fundamental truth that the ability to raise money is not a precondition of government spending it. It is therefore premised on a falsehood, and that’s never a good basis for taxation.

But the problems only get worse the longer one thinks about hypothecation.

If we can agree that in the chicken and egg scenario of tax and spend then it

NOW IMMINENT

www.nipsa.org.uk

In Yorkshire the drive is on for cash savings through bed cuts and job losses in Calderdale and Huddersfield. Up the road in Dewsbury the picture is similar, where renal patients are being diverted as the first steps by Mid Yorkshire Hospitals Trust in downgrading Dewsbury Hospital to divert patients and revenue to help pay for the costly PFI hospitals in Wakefield and Pontefract.

In Birmingham the Heart of England Foundation Trust is being pressed to come clean on its plans, kept under wraps until now, for Good Hope and Solihull Hospitals, amid fears that patients will be diverted to the trust’s main Heartlands Hospital instead.

One reconfiguration that has become bogged down in confusion is that in Greater Manchester, where the usual incantations have been dressed up in the title Healthier Together.

But beneath the evasive rhetoric, the “pre-consultation business case” admits that the plan would axe 5,400 jobs over five years, three-quarters of them clinical staff.

There are many more plans, all with documents to deceive rather than enlighten those with the energy to wade through the soggy pages of disposable prose and inane graphics inserted as space-filler to deter all but the most committed.

But while NHS core services are under serious threat, the market madness is also developing at rapid pace.

At the height of the silly season came news that a private physiotherapy firm in Kent has just landed a plum NHS contract in Hull.

The desperately poor National Car Parks spin-off NSL, which is now England’s largest provider of non-emergency ambulance — patient transport — services, is deep in trouble up and down the country for its chronic failures to deliver the promised performance standards, with appalling delays in collecting patients from home or hospital.

At the end of July, a local scrutiny committee heard that West Kent clinical commissioning group

News

felt it had the basis to terminate NSL’s contract, given a string of high-profile failures to collect vulnerable patients on time — including one patient left waiting for collection from hospital from 6.30pm to 3.30am.

But the clinical commissioning group would not do so for fear of a legal challenge from the company — and the lack of other providers able to take over the failing service.

West Kent is not alone in feeling powerless to act against poor-quality, failing private providers.

The Care Quality Commission has admitted that it was afraid to take strong action against belowstandard care homes for fear of being sued by the private companies.

In Somerset, Musgrove Park Hospital Trust cancelled its contract with private firm Vanguard Health just days after dozens of patients suffered the consequences of substandard eye surgery in Vanguard’s mobile unit.

Page 13 NIPSA NEWS

But the NHS will almost certainly wind up carrying the costs of compensation for the patients injured — and also faces legal questions over the severed contract.

But amid the chaos, some good news. At the beginning of September I saw a fantastic 300-strong meeting in Stoke-on-Trent loudly reject the plans by four Staffordshire clinical commissioning groups to hand over control of the £1.2bn budget for cancer care and end-of-life care to one or more private companies — making this, by my reckoning, the biggest-ever public meeting against possible privatisation.

Some 10,000 have signed the petition — and thousands are now waiting for the shortlist for the contract, to be announced this month. This will run and run.

The unions are balloting for action on NHS pay which has been shamefully cut in real terms.

John Lister is director of Health Emergency

laims economist Richard Murphy was always spend that came first, and tax was the way in which once upon a time kings tried to reclaim the cost of their wars, and now governments try to reclaim the cost of their commitments to their electorates, then to pretend that spending on the NHS is dependent upon raising tax is simply wrong. The spend comes first. The tax comes second. Hypothecation gets this completely the wrong way round. It’s as fundamental a mistake as most people and politicians make about the way money is created, and has to be put right.

What is more though, to pretend that this particular spend on the NHS is dependent upon raising tax from a particular group in society – who are those who by and large earn less than average, and those who by and large have lower savings, and who are, therefore, in the main, those to whom wealth and income should be redistributed – is little short of absurd. If it is spending that has the priority in any government’s agenda (and that must be true) then because no one raises tax without there being a spending priority, then it is ridiculous to raise a tax in a way that contradicts the spending priority inherent in the commitment to the NHS. And, as a matter of fact, that spending commitment to the NHS is about redistribution; it is about the creation of equality; it is about overcoming disadvantage; it is about equal access for all, and it is about making available to all what would otherwise only be available to some (as the USA proves). And yet, the form of hypothecation that is being chosen achieves the exact opposite result. Those who can already afford healthcare, come what may, will not suffer any significant burden as a result of this additional hypothecated tax and yet those to whom income and wealth should be redistributed will bear additional costs right down to, and including, those who might not even pay income tax.

Nothing about that makes micro economic sense, or sense in the context of any form of social justice.

Nor however does this make any sense in macroeconomic terms. If spending comes first, as I believe has always been the case with regard to government, then tax has never been about raising revenue, as such. Tax is, instead, about re-claiming the cost expended by government for a number of reasons.

The first, and very straightforward reason for reclaiming that expenditure by

tax is to make sure that the government’s currency is used as the medium for exchange in the economy which it regulates, and this happens because it demands settlement of tax liability in that currency, thereby making sure that it is the primary medium for exchange in use in the economy, which then, vitally, lets it spend using that currency as the way I can undertake is own spending.

Without tax its currency might have no use in the economy, which may decide to use another currency instead e.g. US dollars, and the government could not then spend as it wishes.

Second, the decision as to how much to spend is key to fiscal policy. Deficits have been vital for two purposes. One is economic stimulus and the second is keeping inflation going – which is, again, vital to prevention of recession. So tax is not decided upon to cover spend, it is only reclaimed to the extent considered necessary to keep the macroeconomy going in the right direction.

And third, tax is used to reinforce the social policy inherent in spending decisions. So, it is used to re-price goods and services that the market gets wrong, and it is used to redistribute income and wealth. These are vital roles and in the process tax represents the choice that is available in a democracy, which is perhaps its greatest merit.

Hypothecation, in contrast, puts forward the pretence that we are in the market and that we can only have what we can pay for. This has, quite simply, never been true of government, and never need be true of government, precisely because it can print money, and precisely because it has to run deficits to keep the economy moving in a direction where recession is avoided, full employment is the aim, and sustainability is aimed for in a way consistent with both. The very logical of hypothecation is, in that case, in contrast with the principle of universality on which the NHS was founded.

The Labour Party is making a mistake if it backs hypothecation. It’s making an even bigger mistake using NIC for that purpose.

Labour does need to reclaim more of the spending it will make in the economy: that much may be true. But if it is then it is the tax gap (the amount of tax corporations get away with not paying) that it needs to tackle. This is could do.

It should not raise NIC.

Which is better – tax-free childcare or childcare vouchers?

Page 14 NIPSA NEWS

www.nipsa.org.uk

News

The Childcare Payments Bill will introduce tax-free childcare and abolish childcare vouchers. But which is better for local families?

THE short answer is that it depends entirely on the parents’ circumstances, and those of their children. That is why both schemes must be made available to local parents.

The Childcare Voucher (CCV) Scheme enables parents to sacrifice up to £243 each month from their salary, before deductions, towards the cost of registered childcare for children up to the age of 16.

The Tax Free Childcare (TFC) Scheme will provide a supplement from the Government of £2 for every £8 that an eligible person pays towards childcare for the purposes of enabling them to work, up to a maximum of £2,000 per child per year, for children up to the age of 12.

In practice, however, the average payment will be around £600.

The following examples illustrate how this works in practice: A. Childcare Vouchers

If both parents are Basic Rate Tax Payers and sacrificing £486 between them, the maximum annual saving is £1,866.24. Basically you make a 32% saving on the amount you sacrifice.

For example: Mr and Mrs Jones pay £450 for childcare each month for their daughter. Both of their employers offer the Childcare Voucher scheme. They each sacrifice £225 per month

each and make a 32% saving of £72 each.

Their joint annual saving is £1,728.

B. Tax-free childcare

Parents can receive help with 20% of their childcare costs up to a maximum of £2,000 per year per child. Parents receive a 20% top up on the value of sums they put into their Tax-Free Childcare account.

For example: Mr and Mrs Jones pay £450 for childcare each month for their daughter. They only need to pay 80% of their childcare costs and therefore add £360 to their Tax-Free Childcare account each month. The Government tops the account up by £90. Their joint annual saving is £1,080.

And because the new scheme only provides support for parents of children up to the age of 12, there are long-term problems with it too, as it will remove the support available for breakfast clubs, after school clubs, etc for children aged 12 or over. The following example shows how this could work in practice: C. Childcare Vouchers

If both parents are Basic Rate Tax Payers and sacrificing £486 between them, the maximum annual saving is £1,866.24. Basically you make

a 32% saving on the amount you sacrifice.

For example: Mr and Mrs Smith pay £833 for childcare each month for their daughter up to the age of 5, and £546 per month up to the age of 16. Both of their employers offer the Childcare Voucher scheme. They each sacrifice £243 per month each and make a 32% saving of £78 each. Their joint annual saving is £1,866. These savings continue for 15 years, resulting in a total saving of £27,994.

D. Tax-free childcare

Parents can receive help with 20% of their childcare costs up to a maximum of £2,000 per year per child. Parents receive a 20% top up on the value of sums they put into their Tax-Free Childcare account.

For example: Mr and Mrs Jones pay £833 for childcare each month for their daughter up to the age of 5, and £546 per month up to the age of 12. In the first five years, they only need to pay 80% of their childcare costs and therefore add £666 to their Tax-Free Childcare account each month. The Government tops the account up by £167. They will make a saving of £1,999 during those first five years.

In the next six years, their childcare costs reduce to £546. They only need to pay £437 into their Tax-Free Childcare account each month.

The Government tops the account up by £109.

They will make a saving of £1,308 during these six years.

Cross-border accidents – where to pursue a claim?

IF YOU are unfortunate enough to be injured as the result of an accident, it is useful to know that a claim can either be pursued in the country in which the accident occurred, or the resident country of the person, company or body at fault for the accident.

With the increase in cross-border travel, more and more people are involved in accidents abroad. There are also more accidents in Northern Ireland involving persons from the Republic of Ireland and other countries.

If you intend pursuing a personal injury claim as a result of such an accident, there are a number of important considerations when choosing the jurisdiction in which to pursue your personal injury claim.

In any personal injury claim, you must establish who was at fault for the accident. Sometimes this is straightforward and the other party will admit liability from the outset. In other cases, liability can be a lot more difficult to establish and your solicitor may have to engage experts to assist in this regard as well as obtaining statements from witnesses to the accident or any relevant CCTV footage or photographs.

Northern Ireland

If liability for the accident remains an issue, or if the ‘at-fault’ party does not offer a reasonable amount of compensation, your solicitor will issue court proceedings in either the County Court or the High Court. Negotiations can take place at any stage throughout the court procedure but if an agreement cannot be reached, your case will be heard by a

Key considerations when selecting jurisdiction

Chancery House, 88 Victoria Street, Belfast BT1 3GN Tel: 028 9032 9801 www.mtb-law.co.uk

judge who will listen to the evidence and decide which party was at fault for the accident and award the appropriate amount of compensation.

Republic of Ireland

In the Republic of Ireland, the process in taking a personal injury claim is more complex. If liability cannot be established, or the compensation offered by the ‘at-fault’ party is not reasonable, then your solicitor will lodge your claim with the Injuries Board.

The Injuries Board is a government body set up to assess claims for compensation for anyone who has suffered an injury as a result of an accident. A claim is lodged by submitting an application form along with a medical report on the injuries sustained.

Once your claim is lodged with the Injuries Board, it is likely that the Board will arrange a further medical appointment for you and then proceed to make an assessment of your compensation, providing liability is not an issue.

Once this assessment has been

By Harry McAleese

made, your solicitor will advise you as to whether the assessment is reasonable and you will have the option of accepting or rejecting the assessment.

The insurance company of the ‘atfault’ party will also have the option to accept or reject the assessment. If both parties accept the assessment then the case may be settled.

If either party rejects the assessment then the Injuries Board will issue an authorisation which will enable your solicitor to issue court proceedings.

The other party may reject the assessment if liability is not accepted or if they do not agree with the assessment made.

If either party rejects the assessment, your solicitor will then issue court proceedings in the District Court, Circuit Court or High Court.

As in Northern Ireland, negotiations may take place at any stage throughout the court process but if an agreement cannot be reached then a judge will hear your case and make a determination on liability and the appropriate amount of compensation.

1. You may be entitled to considerably more compensation for an injury in the Republic of Ireland than you would be for the same injury in Northern Ireland 2. Pursuing a claim in the Republic of Ireland can take longer due to the involvement of the Injuries Board and the different court system and procedures.

3. Legal costs are not usually paid separately by the insurance company in the Republic of Ireland until court proceedings are issued.

4. In Northern Ireland you have three years from the date of the accident to pursue a personal injury claim. The time limit in the Republic of Ireland is two years from the date of accident. This applies to all accident claims.

If you have been injured in an accident, it is in your best interests to instruct a solicitor to ensure that you pursue a claim in the appropriate jurisdiction and to further ensure that you obtain the full amount of compensation to which you are entitled.

Our firm has solicitors qualified to practice in both jurisdictions and with vast experience in dealing with all types of personal injury claims.

If you wish to pursue a claim, you should contact NIPSA to request a LS2 Form to allow an assessment of your case, which is free under the Legal Assistance Scheme for personal injuries.

This scheme covers all types of personal injury cases and is also open to family members of individuals with NIPSA membership.

www.nipsa.org.uk

NIPSA to hold series of pre-retirement seminars

A SERIES of pre-retirement seminars for NIPSA members close to retirement is to be held in November.

Moving from full-time employment into retirement can pose a number of social, domestic and financial problems but helpful advice is on hand.

A spokesperson explained: “It is hoped the seminars will provide members with an insight into how to plan positively, adapting to changes and to recognise the problems that can arise can be a window of opportunity that will lead to a smoother transition towards happiness and fulfilment in retirement.”

Seminar speakers are drawn the areas of financial planning, taxation and the law as well as the Retired Members Group.

The seminars are being held in Malone House, Barnett’s Demesne, Belfast on the following dates: Health & Social Care members: Tuesday, 11 November 2014, starting at 10am; NILGOSC/PO members: Wednesday, 12 November 2014, starting at 10am; and Civil Service members: Thursday, 13 November 2014, starting at 10am.

A spokesperson added: “In the event that the number of applications received exceeds the number that can be accommodated, those closest to their retirement date will be offered places first.

“Applications received after 17 October 2014 will not be considered. However, anyone who is unsuccessful in their application will be placed on a reserve list for the next seminar which is planned for spring 2015.”

For further information contact Mairead Donnelly at NIPSA Mairead.donnelly@nipsa.org.uk

Talks continue on public service pensions in NI

Page 15 NIPSA NEWS

News

BI-LATERAL negotiations are continuing over regulations required for each new public sector pension scheme set to be introduced from April 1, 2015, on the back of the Hutton reforms and the Northern Ireland Assembly’s Public Service Pension Act 2014.

Talks are at various stages depending on the scheme – with the LGPS (NI)/NILGOSC regulations having been published in early July, NICS negotiations are at an advanced stage while HSC is some way behind the other schemes.

Work is also continuing in the DFP/Sponsoring Departments and NIC-ICTU Joint Working Group on a range of cross-cutting issues.

At a meeting in early September, the revised terms of reference for the group were agreed. Other matters being dealt with include: l Cost control mechanisms for the new schemes; l Governance arrangements over the setting up of Pensions Boards and Scheme Advisory Board (see below for NILGOSC); l Fair Deal guidance for Northern Ireland; l Employer contribution rates; and l Impact of latest Westminster Pensions Bill and Inland Revenue Pension rule changes.

On the requirement to improve governance arrangements and to put in place both a Pensions Board and a Scheme Advisory Board, the proposals of Government and “the Pensions Regulator” (TPR) provide for an improvement in governance and greater employee/trade union input into the running of public service pension schemes.

Over NILGOSC, there is concern, however, that the current DOE consultation and the soon-to-be-published TPR code on public sector pension scheme governance could be a step back.

NILGOSC has been functioning for 60 years and for that time has had the Committee structure. While it may have gone through some tweaking over those years, the broad arrangements for Committee membership have stood the test of time.

In fact, the NILGOSC provisions are both often cited as best practice and are the envy of LGPS schemes in England and Wales. The LGPS TUS (England/Wales) would very much welcome having similar arrangements.

The current Committee is made up of an independent Chairperson, two independent members, five employer nominees and five trade union nominees of which NIPSA has two, including holding the position of Vice Chairperson.

The NILGOSC Committee provisions were supplemented some years ago with the setting up of the DOE LGPS(NI)

Just a reminder

Pension Group.

NIPSA Assistant General Secretary Bumper Graham, who is also NILGOSC Deputy Chairman, said: “The Group has functioned well and the DOE Minister demonstrated clear support for the group and saw the clear delineation between its role and function with that of the NILGOSC Committee.

“The Group is chaired by the DOE with four employer nominees and four trade union nominees with NIPSA leading for the unions. It is supported by two senior NILGOSC staff. These arrangements fully reflect both NIPSA’s and NIC-ICTU’s responses to various consultations, Assembly debates including with the DFP Committee and in numerous fora that have discussed public service pensions governance per se and specifically within the DOE Review Group Forum.

“The overall view of NIPSA and NIC-ICTU is to maintain the dual governance arrangements for the LGPS(NI), i.e.

NILGOSC Committee as the Pension Board and the DOE Review Group as the Scheme Advisory Board.

“Every effort will be made to ensure that these arrangements are applied going forward over NILGOSC. In addition, we will be pressing for other schemes on the employee side of Pension Boards and Scheme Advisory Boards that it is the trade unions who provide the representation.”

Branch AGM season is upon us…

BRANCHES should now be making preparations to hold their Annual General Meetings and to nominate and elect their new branch officers and representatives to carry forward the work of members at Branch level, which – in turn – can feed into te other structures within the union.

As reported elsewhere in NIPSA News, members working in and delivering public services see at first hand the threat to those services and the impact this has.

At times, members may feel powerless to

do anything about this. However, with a vibrant local branch and a strong union, there is much NIPSA can do to represent members – both at local level and at wider levels within the trade union movement as well as society at large.

In the current climate of attacks on jobs, services, terms and conditions, pay, pensions etc, it is imperative that NIPSA branches are both active AND wellorganised.

Branches can secure a guest speaker for

their AGMs by contacting NIPSA’s Organisation and Recruitment Section on 02890 661831 or by emailing recruitment@nipsa.org.uk.

In addition, brief reports from AGMs should be forwarded to Alison Millar at alison.millar@nipsa.org.uk or Bob Miller at bob.miller@nipsa.org.uk for inclusion in future issues of NIPSA News. As always, a picture to accompany the report would be especially welcome.

Visit http://www.nipsa.org.uk AND give a like to our Facebook page and follow us on Twitter @nipsa

How the City still keeps hold of the Establishment

Page 16 NIPSA NEWS

The way blame for the 2008 crash has been deflected from those responsible shows how power really works

IT IS rarely clear, at the time, that an historical era is coming to an end and a new one beginning, but six years ago this week, Britain was in exactly such a period of transition.

On August 30 2008, Chancellor Alistair Darling warned of an recession more “profound and longlasting” than had previously been imagined. The sub-prime crisis had, for most of 2008, seemed like distant rumblings of thunder. In this different country — a Britain in which just 26,000 people, rather than a million today, depended on food banks — there was little appreciation that a precipice beckoned.

We know now how far we had to fall when Lehman Brothers failed for bankruptcy on September 15 2008. Not since the 1870s have wages dropped for so long. Benefits for low-paid workers, disabled people and unemployed people have been frozen, cut, sanctioned or simply stripped away. And yet — as the City’s bankers and stockbrokers return to work this week — the financial elite responsible for so much of Britain’s recent travails has never had it so good.

Earlier this year, personalised number plates celebrating the City’s return to boom time were being advertised on financial news service Bloomberg. BU11 MKT could have been yours for £25,000, while BU11 ESH was on sale for £15,000. Of the 3,529 European bankers paid more than €1 million in 2012, 2,714 were British, and

www.nipsa.org.uk

Books

their pay leapt 35 per cent compared with the previous year.

Fertile ground, you might think, for savvy populists to launch a campaign directed at the Two Britains: a banking elite booming away despite being responsible for so many of our problems, while millions suffer a crisis not of their making. It has not happened.

Why not? Some would call it counterproductive: that our financial elite remains a desperately needed cash cow. But as research by the Centre for Socio-Cultural Change in 2011 uncovered, this is a mirage. Because of rampant tax avoidance in the financial sector, the City provided “remarkably little revenue in the boom years” before the state had to bail it out with more than a trillion pounds of public money. Tax revenues from finance were worth £193 billion between 2002 and 2008, or just 6.8 per cent of total tax receipts.

Britain’s benighted manufacturing industry actually provided double the tax revenues, because it engaged in less tax-dodging and employed more taxpaying workers.

Instead, the City’s deflection of blame has much to do with its grip over political and media elites. In the initial post-war decades, the City’s power was curtailed. This was a time of “broad and systemic regulation of finance”, as economics professor Costas Lapavitsas puts it. “The City in the middle of a socialist state is as anomalous as would be the

Pope in Moscow,” declared Prime Minister Clement Attlee before he nationalised the Bank of England. Even many 20th-century Conservative politicians favoured state regulation of the flow of capital.

That all changed when the Bretton Woods global system of fixed exchange rates came crashing down in 1971. The same year, Ted Heath’s Conservative government lifted the borrowing restrictions on banks.On the eve of her election triumph, Margaret Thatcher applauded the City for attracting “no subsidies, no hidden subventions” — which, in hindsight, seems darkly ironic. Before she waltzed into No 10, the London Stock Exchange surged to record heights, leading this newspaper to declare “Shares Vote for Maggie!”

She swiftly abolished capital controls, and promoted slash-and-burn economic policies that hammered manufacturing industry but which Tory minister Ian Glimour declared were designed to “satisfy the City that the Thatcherites were still being tough”. She later promoted privatisations that lined City coffers and further boosted the Square Mile with her famous Big Bang package in 1986.

But the City’s political coup depended on the Labour leadership, too. In the early 1990s, John Smith and Mo Mowlam famously courted key City players in a so-called “Prawn Cocktail Offensive”.

When New Labour assumed power, manufacturing was allowed to continue to wilt while the City flourished. As former Labour spin-doctor Damian McBride put it to me, “high finance” players and media barons were the only business figures Gordon Brown would ever actively go and meet.

Today’s list of Tory donors is dominated by City types like hedge-fund supremo and Conservative treasurer Michael Farmer, hedge-fund boss Stanley Fink, and Richard Sharp, a former senior Goldman Sachs employee appointed

by George Osborne to the Bank of England’s Financial Policy Committee. One hundred and thirty-four Tory MPs and peers are or were once employed in the financial sector, helping to ensure that the City’s interests are well-articulated in Westminster. Big Finance spends around £93 million on lobbying each year.

Leading lights from all parties — including Labour’s Chuka Umunna and Ed Balls — are frequently treated to City of London dinners with leading financiers that operate Chatham House Rules, ensuring conversations are off-therecord.

Using powerful financial PR firms, the City has successfully deflected media coverage, too. Between them, Brunswick and RLM Finsbury represent around half of the FTSE 100 and FTSE 200 companies. As one senior financial journalist put it to me, that affords them “collective protection”. With a PR agency acting as the sole

conduit for stories, journalists risk being frozen out if they write stories that offend senior City figures. As a former Daily Mail City editor has it, during the financial crash such agencies “acted as a barrier to journalists, investors and perhaps even regulators who were trying to discover which banks were broken beyond repair”.

So instead, our Establishment focuses its ire on the behaviour of groups other than the City: the unemployed, benefit claimants and immigrants.

They have little political representation and weak lobby groups. The City elite plunged Britain into one of the worst economic disasters in modern history but its political power shields it from scrutiny or radical reform. And until this stranglehold is broken, little will change.

Owen Jones’ new book, The Establishment: And How they Get Away with it, is published by Allen Lane.

Strange bedfellows www.nipsa.org.uk

The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isis) is like an Islamic Khmer Rouge and deals with the rest of the world through violence. write Patrick Cockburn.

But a slogan of Isis is that “media is half of jihad”, so events like the ritual murder of David Haines are geared to show strength and dominate the headlines, obscuring any sense that Isis’s many enemies are making headway through American airstrikes.

President Barack Obama was last week speaking about the plans of the US and its allies to combat Isis, saying they intended “todegrade and ultimately destroy the terrorist group”.

For the moment, they are long way from these ambitions and will be doing well if Isis can be contained within the confines of its Caliphate, which already stretches from the Iranian border to the outskirts of Aleppo.

Fear of Isis is producing strange bed-fellows: in Iraq the Iranian controlled Shia militias, which used to specialise in killing American troops, have relieved the Shia town of Amerli, long besieged by Isis, the militia’s advance made possible

by US airstrikes.

Hundreds of officers from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps are embedded

Page 17 NIPSA NEWS

Books

in the militias as leaders and advisers without Washington making any objection.

The line-up of opponents of Isis is strange and not at all what it appears to be.

There is a core group of NATO members that is a sort of supporters club for those opposing Isis.

By highly publicised killings, Isis is showing that it will retaliate against any of these countries and make them pay a price. With Isis holding 49 hostages from the Turkish consulate in Mosul, Turkey says it dare not do too much, even if it wanted to do.

Within the region, US Secretary of State John Kerry has been rushing from capital to capital putting together a coalition of Sunni states pledged to fight Isis.

Some local observers are calling this “the coalition of the unwilling” since its members are cautious about confronting Isis. Mr Kerry has been in Cairo and before that in Jeddah and Ankara, but he is receiving only vague promises of backing. Saudi Arabia has agreed to host a base to be used for training Syrian opposition fighters who are supposedly going to go to war with both Isis and Syrian government forces.

Turkey will not allow the US to use its big base at Incirlik to launch air strikes.

Jordan senses its vulnerability if it is in the frontline of opposition to Isis which has Jordanian sympathisers.

If Mr Kerry has any sense he will be satisfied with this limp-wristed level of regional support. After all, Isis and the Sunni jihadi movement in Iraq and Syria could not have come to dominate the anti-government opposition in both countries without sustained backing from Saudi Arabia and the Sunni monarchies of the Gulf.

The US will be pleased if these countries stop aiding Isis with money and propaganda. Having them on board may protect any anti-

Isis campaign from being seen as an anti-Sunni crusade since the beneficiaries are likely to be Shia or Alawite governments.

Turkey is being asked to close its 510-mile long border with Syria ending the free flow of personnel and equipment so important to the rise of Isis.

Lastly, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf oil states and Jordan have tribal and financial links to the Sunni in Iraq and Syria whom they can seek to turn against Isis – though this will be not easy to do when dealing with movement specialising in ferocious retaliation.

In addition to these cautious or reluctant allies the US has states and movements who are actively fighting Isis on the ground, but many are long-demonised enemies of America and the UK. One commentator calls this “the un-coalition of the willing” because those willing to oppose Isis in Iraq include the Iraqi army and the pesh merga of the Kurdistan regional government, but the most potent fighting force on the government side is the Shia militias, most though not all of which are led or advised by Iranian Revolutionary Guard officers. Iran is crucial for the defence of the Baghdad government.

Mr Kerry knows this but was

grandly declaring at the weekend that Iran could not join his anti-Isis coalition.

In Syria the situation is even messier since the most powerful opponent of Isis is the Syrian army of President Bashar al-Assad whom the US and its allies are supposedly trying to weaken and displace.

Washington, London and Paris are publicly aghast at the idea of undertaking a public U-turn and allying themselves against Isis, but they may not have a choice but to cooperate with him covertly. “What do you think intelligence services are for?” commented one former diplomat.

Other effective opponents of Isis in Syria include the PYD, the Syrian Kurdish movement which the US and Europe still regard as “terrorist”. Part of the Turkish Kurd PKK, these fighters were highly effective in fighting Isis in Iraq. Hezbollah of Lebanon have also been central in battling the Jihadis. If Mr Obama and David Cameron are serious about acquiring local partners to stop Isis then they must look to the members of “un-coalition” who will do most of the fighting. It is not going to be easy.

NIPSA LITERARY RENAISSANCE

NIPSA has over the years included in its membership (comprising both well known activists and ordinary members alike) a number of outstanding literary figures – poets, novelists and raconteurs of the calibre of Ciaran Carson, Gerry McCullough and the late great Sam McAughtry, to name but a few.

NIPSA’s literary revival gained a new momentum in June this year with the publication of the critically acclaimed novel ‘The Blue Room’ by NIPSA HQ based activist and award winning short fiction writer Michael McKeown, a noir tour de force which has already created something of a stir in literary circles and was recently described by one commentator as ‘one of the best books ever to come out of Northern Ireland’.

Hot on the heels of ‘The Blue Room’ comes another novel by a NIPSA member, Mark Lynch, who works at the RQIA (Regulation and Quality Improvement Authority), the independent health and social care regulator.

Mark’s novel ‘The Year Of Zero-Sum’ also comes from Northern Ireland publishing house David James Publishing, a relative newcomer to the industry but one that has to date shown a commendable willingness to seek out and publish new local writers as well as more established authors.

Unlike ‘The Blue Room, which is set in a Northern Ireland of the near future, ‘The Year Of ZeroSum’ reimagines the past. In a dystopian vision of what might have been, rather than what may be, the author takes us back to 1969 and presents us with a version of Ireland partitioned in a way that few would ever have imagined, with the Soviet Union now controlling the North (as well as Britain and the continent of Europe) while the South is garrisoned by the USA. The Stalinist administration in the North takes a robust approach to law and order issues with armed insurrection punishable by execution and dissidents, real and imagined, shunted off to one of the gulags set up across the territory, including Rathlin Island which has been transformed into a brutal prison camp.

The Soviet forces now include former RUC and IRA personnel working together, recruited for their local knowledge. Life is not exactly Disneyland in the USA controlled South either, with the Fianna Fail government there unable to suppress an underground resistance movement receiving clandestine support from the KGB. Movement across the border (nicknamed the ‘Shamrock Curtain’) is virtually impossible.

The main narrative is focused on an armed rebellion in the North, financed by the CIA, against

Available online at: http://www.orbooks.com/b ooksellers/

a backdrop of continuing sectarian strife, the development of a Trotskyist protest movement in the University area and the plight of ordinary people caught up in a spiralling cycle of violence.

Amidst all of the mayhem, one character sets out on a mission to avenge his father’s murder, unaware of the magnitude of the potential consequences for all the people of Belfast – leading to former enemies being forced to work together, despite the ongoing sectarian tensions between them, to find him and bring him to justice.

If this novel has a genre, it could probably be best described as alternative history; fast paced fiction is the medium for exploring how our local history might have developed if the historical circumstances of the late 1960s were significantly altered.

It is an unusual and original take on the subject. The ‘Troubles’ are still there but viewed in an entirely different perspective from that portrayed in more conventional fictional treatments.

‘The Year Of Zero-Sum’ is certainly an interesting addition to the growing literary lexicon produced

by NIPSA members and is definitely worth a read.

‘The Year Of Zero-Sum’ by Mark Lynch, published by David James Publishing, is out now.

Human rights abuses and deaths London-listed firms should be trie

Page 18 NIPSA NEWS

European and world affairs

SEVEN in 10 MPs polled want British companies held to account in Britain for harm caused in developing countries, amid growing concern over human rights abuses, including loss of livelihoods, injuries and deaths.

In a poll, almost three-quarters (71 per cent) of politicians surveyed favoured action, including over three in five (62 per cent) Conservatives.

The proportion of the public behind the move is even larger, at 78 per cent, including the same ratio of Conservative voters.

The Dods poll was conducted online with 100 MPs between July 3 and 28. The Populus research was carried out via telephone interviews with 1,003 members of the public from August 8-10.

This new independent opinion research comes after 1,130 Bangladeshi deaths in the Rana Plaza disaster last year, many of whom were producing clothes for British stores. It also follows the deaths of at least 16 local people at a gold mine in Tanzania owned by a British-registered firm.

The MPs’ poll, from Dods, and the public survey, by Populus, have been published to launch a major campaign to put pressure on the next government to enable British companies to be held to account and bring justice for overseas victims.

Our fair-trade company, Traidcraft, launched the campaign just over a year after British ministers published their action plan on business and human rights in response to UN guiding principles on the issue.

Traidcraft sources products from around 30 countries worldwide as part of its mission to fight poverty through trade. It also campaigns to ensure people living in poverty can benefit from mainstream trading activities.

www.nipsa.org.uk

The government plan was launched by the then foreign secretary William Hague and Business Secretary Vince Cable last September.

Though the British government was the first to publish a national action plan, Traidcraft is dismayed by the lack of action since publication, especially on access to justice.

In a hardhitting report, Traidcraft highlights the building collapse at Rana Plaza, where many low-paid young women claim that they were forced to continue work, despite concerns about cracks in the building.

Masuma, a Rana Plaza survivor, said: “There was so much debris, you could barely see. I closed my eyes and started to crawl my way towards the window.”

Traidcraft points to more garment workers’ deaths in Bangladesh and

Criminals and corrupt politi a year from the world's poor Money stolen through shell companies and tax evasion

At least $1trn a year is being “stolen” from the world’s poorest countries by criminals and corrupt officials who siphon cash through money laundering, tax evasion and embezzlement.

The staggering cost of corruption is revealed in a study published today by ONE, the antipoverty group co-founded by the rock star Bono.

It calls on the G20 group of rich nations, including Britain, to expose the anonymous shell companies which are used to “rip off” poor countries.

According to ONE, the millions diverted from poverty-stricken nations is channelled through banks and secret companies in places including London, Delaware and Hong Kong.

If the money was retained by the developing nations, it could help avert 3.6m deaths a year between 2015 and 2025, the study concludes. It would also mean that these countries would no longer need to rely on overseas aid from rich nations.

The report found that $3.2trn of the world’s $20trn of undeclared assets originated in developing countries. If the missing millions were taxed, it could bring in revenues of $19.5bn a year. In sub-Saharan Africa alone, curbing cor-

ruption could educate an extra 10m children a year; provide antiretroviral drugs for more than 1m people with HIV/Aids and pay more almost 16.5m vaccines.

David Cameron and George Osborne secured the backing of the eight leading economies to crack down on shell companies and tax havens at last year’s G8 summit in Loch Erne, Northern Ireland. But ONE fears that progress around the world is stalling and is warning that the drive must be extended to the top 20 economies, including China and India, at a G20 summit Australia in November.

A four-point plan proposed by ONE urged G20 leaders to: l expose the “phantom firms” involved in money laundering by making information about them publicly available l bring in strong “payment disclosure laws” on oil, gas and mining to stop natural resources being “stolen” from poor countries l crack down on tax evasion through automatic exchange of information so that poor nations can collect taxes they are due l ensure all governments publish data so the public can “follow the money” and hold their

leaders to account.

Dr David McNair, ONE’s transparency and accountability policy director, said: “In developing countries, corruption is a killer. Up to 3.6m lives could be saved if we end the web of secrecy that helps the criminal and corrupt. When governments are deprived of their own resources to invest in the essentials - like nurses and teachers the human cost is devastating.”

John Githongo, an anti-corruption campaigner and chief executive of the Inuka Kenya Fund, said: “For too long, G20 countries have turned a blind eye to massive financial outflows from developing countries which are channelled through offshore bank accounts and secret companies.

Introducing smart policies could help end this trillion dollar scandal and reap massive benefits for our people at virtually no cost. The G20 should make those changes now.”

The ONE report, The Trillion Dollar Scandal, says: “Corruption is perhaps the greatest threat to economic growth in developing countries and the uncomfortable truth is that, all too often, money diverted from their own budgets ends up in G20 countries and their related jurisdictions.”

It adds: “Illegal manipulation of cross-border trade is the biggest source of losses to poor countries. The secrecy that allows that activity to thrive may also help to conceal financial flows related to criminal bribery and theft by government officials, human trafficking and/or the illegal sale of arms and contraband, depending on the circumstances.”

s caused by ed in our courts www.nipsa.org.uk

Page 19 NIPSA NEWS

European and world affairs

Union slams outsourcing

CPSU, the main Australian public sector union has slammed a Government decision to outsource Centrelink and Medicare call centre work putting thousands of regional jobs at risk.

The Department of Human Services has entered into a contract with other countries, and is demanding that British companies be held to acTelstra starting next month. count if they knowingly source from dangerous or exploitative factories.

The proposal to get Telstra to handle calls for Centrelink and Medicare In addition, the report — Justice: We Mean Business — outlines how threatens the job security of thouBritish-listed African Barrick Gold, Tanzania’s largest gold producer, has sands of DHS staff and comes in the taken a “heavy-handed” approach to security at the mine, which resulted wake of the Government's decision to in several police shootings of local people. outsource the Medicare payments Emmanuel Gesabo, the son of 56-year-old Magige Ghati Gesabo, died system. after police providing security at the mine shot him. Magige said: “He was Community and Public Sector my eldest son, and my family depended on him so much. He was going to Union National Secretary Nadine look after me when I got old and now he is gone.”

Flood said staff are shocked and disHe is among a group of Tanzanians who are now suing the company in mayed at the news. She said: "There the English courts. is a real and growing fear among workers that this Government is hell But Traidcraft points out that this option may not be open to similar bent on breaking up and selling off cases in future. chunks of the public sector to its big In order to stop British companies operating with impunity around the business mates. Tony Abbott's own world, there must be an option to hold them to account in Britain and for victims to pursue justice in Britain. These polls indicate clear majority sup- Commission of Audit set a blueprint for outsourcing and now this Governport for this option among the MPs and the public surveyed. ment is wasting no time in acting on In the run-up to the election, we call on all political parties to consider it. We have seen it with the decision how to enable access to justice for people who have suffered at the to outsource Medicare payments to hands of British firms. Only then would international trade be truly just. the private sector and now we are Traidcraft urges people to join the campaign by requesting postcards to seeing it with Centrelink work going send to party leaders, by telephoning (0191) 491 0855, or by taking action to Telstra.”

“Staff are shocked and dismayed at online at www.traidcraft.co.uk/justicecampaign the news. They do a fantastic job for Liz May is head of policy and advocacy at Traidcraft. millions of Australians every day and

icians steal $1trn rest countries Some 70 per cent of the 213 biggest corruption cases between 1980 and 2010 involved anonymous shell companies, according to ONE. “These phantom firms are essential tools of the trade for money launderers. They may hide the identities of individuals who profit from illegal activities, including the trafficking of arms, drugs and people, the theft of public funds and/or illegal tax evasion.

“In dozens of jurisdictions around the world, a phantom firm can be created with less information than is needed to obtain a driving licence or open a bank account. Currently completely legal, they exist solely on paper, and allow the people who own or control them (the ‘beneficial owners’) to keep their identities hidden.”

The report says that governments, law enforcement agencies and ordinary citizens face “an impossible task” when they try to reclaim the “stolen assets.” It adds: “They are thwarted by the ease with which criminals can create complex, multi-layered financial structures in which an anonymous shell company can be owned by another shell company or a trust, resulting in a nearly impenetrable web of secrecy that can block even the best law enforcement efforts.”

A spokesman for the Department for International Development said: “The UK has made strong progress on trade, tax and transparency following last year’s G8 in Loch Erne, benefiting countries across the world including the poorest nations. Britain will maintain momentum to improve tax collection, break down trade barriers

and promote transparency in developing countries.”

How poor countries are robbed

In Zambia, a leaked audit report suggested that Mopani Copper Mines had failed to pay tens of millions of dollars due in local tax. Glencore, which owned 73 per cent of Mopani, denied the allegations.

Five African countries – Ghana, Kenya, Mozambique, Tanzania and Uganda – lost an estimated $15bn in tax revenues between 2002 and 2011 due mainly to “trade mispricing” of imports or exports, allowing firms to shift capital to other countries to evade taxes or launder money.

In 2011, subsidiaries of oil and gas firms Shell and Eni paid $1.1bn to the Nigerian government for an offshore block containing estimated oil reserves of nine billion barrels. The government then transferred precisely the same amount to an account in the name of Malabu Oil & Gas, a phantom firm whose hidden owner was the country’s former petroleum minister Dan Etete.

In 2008, the Zimbabwean army took control of the Marange diamond fields. Since then, government diamond mining concessions have been allocated to several companies in questionable circumstances – including Mbada Diamonds, which is partly controlled through companies registered in the British Virgin Islands and Mauritius.

Source: ONE

now they face seeing their work getting outsourced.”

Ms Flood said: “Human Services workers handle everything from your gran’s pension, your own medical records as well as provide vital support in times of emergencies such as drought or bushfires. The work is too important to outsource and most Australians would be appalled to hear that their records might be sent offshore.”

Telstra has already sent thousands of jobs offshore to Asia and has said it might contract the DHS work out to a ‘third-party provider’. Telstra has third-party providers in Australia and throughout Asia.

Up to 200 Telstra staff are due to begin work at the end of October.

The decision has the potential to impact 7,000 call centre staff in 28 sites across Australia, based mainly in regional centres and suburbs.

"These are not highly-paid fat cats, they are mostly mums and dads on average wages who will struggle to find alternative jobs in areas where jobs are scarce, particularly the thousands of them working in regional Australia.”

The CPSU is seeking an urgent meeting with the Department of Human Services to talk about the impact on workers.

Helsinki city workers strike

JHL local chapters for those working for the City of Helsinki took industrial action against the planned corporatisation of several public services by the city.

This stopped trams and underground metro trains in Helsinki for one day on Tuesday 23 September 2014.

The goal of the stoppage was to show that city employees are opposed to the corporatisation of city services currently run by the municipal enterprise Palmia which takes care of city real estate services, catering services, cleaning services, security services telephone and wellbeing services.

The plan was voted on at the City Group Division of the City Board earlier in September.

Five Division members supported corporatisation and four voted for keeping Palmia as a municipal enterprise. The

City Council were to vote on the matter a day after the JHL action. If the City Council supports the proposal, many municipal services will be transferred to outside contractors.

“The neutrality demanded by the competition legislation does not require corporatisation of Palmia services”, says JHL Helsinki District Chair Merja Ruotsalainen.

“Palmia work has been made more efficient as a municipal enterprise in cooperation with the staff. And it is possible to continue this work.”

Palmia is only the beginning of a trend aimed at weakening employee benefits.

Other municipal functions are also being driven to a similar situation, JHL believes.

All work directly connected to citizens' life, health and security was not affected by the industrial action.

Universal Credit in disarray Welfare cuts

Page 20 NIPSA NEWS

DESPITE many reassurances by Department of Work & Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith, the implementation of the much-heralded Universal Credit system is in disarray – just a small fraction of those the Government wants to move to this new benefit have been put on the new system.

Currently it is reported that 13,260 people have been moved to Universal Credit since it was launched in April 2013. Of that figure, 11,070 were still claiming at the end of August 2014.

Iain Duncan Smith is therefore 986,740 short of his and his government’s target of one million people to be moved to Universal Credit by April

Lib Dems face welfare nightmare

THE Liberal Democrats have finally woken up to the realities of what they voted for through the implementation of the Welfare Reform Bill in Great Britain.

In the last couple of weeks, the Lib Dems have admitted the benefit sanctions they helped pass through Parliament are hitting those most in need of support and the Government’s Universal Credit and Employment Support Allowance programmes have led to backlogs and implementation problems.

The Lib Dems are now backing reforms to the bedroom tax – although some would say a little too late. Had they taken this stance during the passage of the Welfare Reform Bill through Westminster, the legislation would not have been implemented and thousands of people would have been saved from the pain they now face with families being forced to move or having to face severe financial hardship.

The growth in food banks is a direct result of the implementation of the Welfare Reform Bill which has resulted in families having no financial support for up to 14 days, leaving them literally penniless.

There is also growing evidence of an ever-increasing backlog of assessments for the Employment Support Allowance claims and migrations from previous disability benefits, alongside long-standing concerns over the quality of such assessments.

While many will see this as too little, too late – or pre-election fever – it is clear the Welfare Reform Bill which has been put in place in Great Britain is not working for those who have lost their jobs, are disabled as well as the hard-working, in-work families. All alike are suffering.

Some of detailed examples of this will be set out at the NIC-ICTU seminar on October 1. A report of this event will appear in next month’s NIPSA News.

www.nipsa.org.uk

2014. The Government is also far short of their revised target of 184,000.

In April 2014, a report from the Work and Pensions Committee of MPs warned that it was still not clear whether the Universal Credit roll-out would actually work.

It is unbelievable, therefore, that some parties in the Northern Ireland Assembly wish to implement the NI Welfare Reform Bill which is clearly not working – the IT system is a failure and more than £150m has already been written off by the Government with more public money expected to be wasted.

Rather than the Westminster Government pro-

posing to sanction the Northern Ireland Assembly – they should first of all get their own house in order and sort out the mess of a system that is clearly not working.

Both in-work and out-of-work families deserve no less than to ensure that any system is fit for purpose and they are not thrown into the chaos that is happening on a day-to-day basis to thousands across Great Britain. These people have had their benefits cut and have suffered vilification in the press having been made to feel worthless through being described with such vile terms as ‘scroungers’ and ‘skivers’.

Protect Your Family

their

…and future

Copies of this leaflet are available from your Branch Secretary, NIPSA HQ or the nipsa website