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There is an alternative: The case against cuts in public spending – PCS
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Tax justice

Addressing the ‘tax gap’ is a vital part of tackling the deficit. Figures produced for PCS by the Tax Justice Network show that £25 billion is lost annually in tax avoidance and a further £70 billion in tax evasion by large companies and wealthy individuals.

An additional £26 billion is going uncollected. Therefore PCS estimates the total annual tax gap at over £120 billion (more than three-quarters of the annual deficit!). It is not just PCS calculating this; leaked Treasury documents in 2006 estimated the tax gap at between £97 and £150 billion.

If we compare the PCS estimate of the tax gap with the DWP estimate of benefit fraud, we can see that benefit fraud is less than 1% of the total lost in the tax gap (see diagram opposite).

Employing more staff at HM Revenue & Customs would enable more tax to be collected, more investigations to take place and evasion reduced. Compliance officers in HMRC bring in over £658,000 in revenue per employee.

If the modest Robin Hood tax – a 0.05% tax on global financial transactions – was applied to UK financial institutions it would raise an estimated £20–30bn per year. This alone would reduce the annual deficit by between 12.5% and 20%.

Closing the tax gap, as part of overall economic strategy, would negate the need for devastating cuts – before even considering tax rises.

Our personal tax system is currently highly regressive. The poorest fifth of the population pay 39.9% of their income in tax, while the wealthiest fifth pays only 35.1%. We need tax justice in personal taxation – which would mean higher income tax rates for the richest and cutting regressive taxes like VAT and council tax.

Cut the real waste

While it is not necessary to cut a penny in public expenditure due to the ‘deficit crisis’, there are of course areas of public spending which could be redirected to meet social needs.

In the civil and public services, we know there are massive areas of waste – like the £1.8 billion the government spent on private sector consultants last year. The government could get better advice and ideas by engaging with its own staff and their trade unions.

There is also the waste of the government having 230 separate pay bargaining units, when we could have just one national pay bargaining structure.

There are also two other large areas where government costs could be cut.

Trident

The current Trident system costs the UK around £1.5 billion every year.

A private paper prepared for Nick Clegg (in 2009, when in opposition) estimated the total costs of Trident renewal amounting to between £94.7bn and £104.2bn over the lifetime of the system, estimated at 30 years. This equates to £3.3bn per year.

At the time Nick Clegg (now Deputy Prime Minister) said: “Given that we need to ask ourselves big questions about what our priorities are, we have arrived at the view that a like-forlike Trident replacement is not the right thing to do.”

The 2010 Liberal Democrat manifesto committed the Party to: “Saying no to the like-for-like replacement of the Trident nuclear weapons system, which could cost £100 billion.”

PCS policy is to oppose the renewal of Trident and invest the money saved in public services, whilst safeguarding Ministry of Defence staff jobs.

War in Afghanistan

The war in Afghanistan is currently costing £2.6 billion per year. The war is both unwinnable and is making the world less safe. More important than the financial cost are the countless Afghan and British lives that are being lost in this conflict.

The PCS alternative…

There is no need for cuts to public services or further privatisations
Creating jobs will boost the economy and cut the deficit. Cutting jobs will damage the economy and increase the deficit
We should invest in areas such as housing, renewable energy and public transport
The UK debt is lower than other major economies
There is a £120 billion tax gap of evaded, avoided and uncollected tax
The UK holds £850 billion in banking assets from the bailout – this is more than the national debt
We could free up billions by not renewing Trident
End the use of consultants

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17.05.11: Steve Bell on David Cameron's NHS reforms speech

Post author:dizzy
Post published:17 November 2011
Post category:NHS politics
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News not making the news

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A couple of news items that are not covered by corporate news sources: the first UK Uncut Fortnum and Mason trial and the ConDem government refusing open discussion of Babar Ahmed.

Prosecution of F&M 145 protesters falls apart – UK Indymedia –

Today my trial for a two hour UKuncut sit-in at Fortnum & Mason ended far faster than anyone estimated. The trial was scheduled to end on the November 30th, however a thin prosecution case was over in just 2 and half days.

Among the officers taking the stand was Inspector Clark – the chief police officer at the scene whom had been at the sit-in in Fortnum and Mason for the duration. She confirmed her view that we were all “sensible and well behaved”.

Clark was the officer filmed telling protesters that they would not be arrested before the systematic arrest of everyone taking part in the sit-in.

What became painfully apparent today was the arbitrary nature of the arrests on March 26th.

In his evidence Chief Inspector Dean admitted that he was under instruction to use his discretion “to let peaceful protesters go”, however decided to ‘mass arrest’ 145 people on site.

This blanket arrest has caused great stress and worry not just for the arrestees but for many family members and friends. Most arrestees where further held in solitary for 24 hours and many were denied access to a lawyer. 13 of my friends from Birmingham were in the store with me and it was particularly hard on some.

Now that senior police officer admit the arrestees where “sensible and well behaved”, it should be asked what the aim of the major police operation on March 26th was.

Under increasing scrutiny the operation looks increasing aimed stifling political protesters and perhaps even an intelligence gathering exercise.

The prosecution have now finished giving their evidence and ultimately their argument is that we took part in a protest. They are not attributing any ‘act’ to the defendants except for ‘not withdrawing’.

We don’t think we have a “case to answer” and so after making the point that this does not amount to any crime, have closed our case too.

The Judge has called recess until Wednesday; when the court will reconvene and we expect closing statements from both the prosecution and the defence for a verdict is reached.

Thanks for all the solidarity we have received so far. All the defendants in the current case want to express their solidarity to everyone fighting against cuts and all facing trial for protesting. Good luck everyone standing up and taking action in coming weeks on both the 23rd of November to defend education and on 30th of November in the largest strike in a generation.

Letters: Babar Ahmed’s case should be debated | Politics | The Guardian –

In parliament last August, the prime minister declared that: “One of the points of the new e-petitions website is to make sure that if a certain level of signatures is reached, the matter will be debated in the house, whether we like it or not. That is an important way of empowering people.” The level required is 100,000. The e-petition asking for a parliamentary debate on the question of a trial for Babar Ahmed in this country, where his alleged offence took place, rather than extraditing him to the US, has 140,000 signatures (Is it justice to lock up Babar Ahmed so long without trial?, 6 November). Now the backbench business committee has decided that there will be no debate, but instead the question can be added on to a pre-existing debate in Westminster Hall on 24 November. Not surprisingly, Babar Ahmed’s family has not accepted the Westminster Hall offer. The 140,000 individual signatories to the Ahmed family’s petition are being disempowered by this cavalier decision by a committee few of them have ever heard of, and which contradicts David Cameron’s public promise. A parliamentary debate should be scheduled as soon as possible.
Geoffrey Bindman QC
Victoria Brittain
Bruce Kent

Post author:dizzy
Post published:16 November 2011
Post category:politics
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http://www.ukuncut.org.uk/targets

The banks have run the global economy into the ground. Bankers, encouraged by the government, gambled recklessly with our money, and they lost. Spectacularly. Remember 2008? In the UK, the government decided it had to step in with a bail-out because these banks were ‘too big to fail’. According to the Bank of England, the cost of this bail-out now exceeds £1trillion. The result is that all high street banks- from Barclays to RBS- owe their existence to public financing.

What did we get for our billions? A banking system that serves ordinary people rather than the super-rich? No. Regretful bankers who refuse to reward themselves with massive bonuses? No. How about increased financial regulation to ensure this crisis couldn’t happen again? No. The government has done nothing to stop it being business as usual for banks.

What’s worse, the money that was given to the bankers is the money now being taken from the poorest in society, guaranteeing a rise in poverty, debt and inequality. Nearly £7 billion will be paid out in bank bonuses this year. This sum is more than the first wave of public spending cuts. We are not all in this together because it’s us who will pay if education, health, housing, libraries, woodland and much, much more, disappears from our lives.

Who’s telling us we must make these cuts? A government led by a cabinet of millionaires, in bed with the bankers, which is now pulling off an audacious con-trick in front of our eyes.

This is how their story goes. The crisis was caused by a bloated public sector. We binged away all our money on luxuries like healthcare and free education and council services, care for the elderly, for people with disabilities, school sports and free school meals for children living in poverty. Now the country is bankrupt and we must repent, detox, cut back. We have to relinquish our welfare state to appease the circling money men. Welcome to the Age of Austerity but don’t worry because we are all in this together.

We say – don’t believe their lies. This is their crisis, but there is no austerity for the bankers.

Conservative election poster 2010

A few recent news articles about the UK’s Conservative and Liberal-Democrat (Conservative) coalition government – the ConDem’s – brutal attack on the National Health Service.

Hospitals cutting surgery follow-up checks to save cash – mirror.co.uk

By LACHLAN MACKINNON, Health Correspondent

Hospital bosses are facing claims they are cutting post-surgery care because it is an “easy target” to save cash.

The ratio of patient checks following operations has dropped over the past two years and looks set to be cut again.
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Critics warned that patients are being discharged back to GPs too early and family doctors may not have the time, funding or necessary skills to deal with problems.

Richard Hoey, editor of Pulse magazine, which analysed data from all 168 acute hospital trusts in England, said: “Reducing post-operative checks has been seen as an easy target by NHS managers looking for efficiencies. Often they will leave patients short of the follow-up care they’d expect.”

Based on last year’s total of 10.1 million operations, calculations show there were 22.2 million post-surgery appointments.

This is 1.2 million fewer than would have been expected based on 2009/10 rates – and 1.6 million fewer than four years ago.

However, the drop may be even higher as the number of operations carried out on the NHS is increasing year on year.

But the Department of Health insisted: “All patients with a clinical need for a follow-up appointment in hospital should have one.

“We have not set targets to reduce such appointments and have no plans to do so.”

Patients denied operations at the last minute, say GPs – Telegraph

GPs say they are referring patients on one set of criteria, only for the patients to be told during pre-operative hospital checks that they no longer qualify.

Dr Clare Gerada, chair of the Royal College of GPs, said primary care trusts (PCTs) – which pay for pre-planned operations – were guilty of treating patients like “commodities”.

She said: “Patients must not be treated as commodities and pushed back and forwards.”

PCTs started tightening up on qualifying criteria for ‘elective’ operations at least a year ago, for example demanding that patients had to demonstrate higher thresholds of pain or disability before being allowed hip or knee replacements. Other common procedures affected include removals of cataract and skin tissue like bunions and gangalions.

Some believe this rationing is reflected in NHS statistics which show the number of overall referrals from GP has dropped in the last year.
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Labour intends to force a vote in the Lords to suspend considering the Health and Social Care / Destroy the NHS Bill until the secret report on its risks to the NHS is released by the Con-Dem scum government. The Information Commissioner has ruled that the suppressed report should be published.

I can exclusively reveal a brief summary of the suppressed report. It says “The Health and Social Care Bill is likely to destroy the NHS as a viable health care system. Having abolished the NHS, private healthcare and health insurance will develop on the American model. The plebs will be f****d but the ultra-rich who don’t use the NHS will be fine”.

The government suffered a minor defeat on the Health and Social Care / Destroy the NHS Bill in the House of Lords over the issue of charities having to pay VAT. There is symbolism to this defeat i.e. further aspects can be defeated.

Cathy Warwick, chief executive of the Royal College of Midwives has criticied the Health and Social Care / Destroy the NHS Bill as a ‘pointless waste’ and attacked the banks for causing the huge national debt.

UK Uncut

Philip Green is a multi-billionaire businessman, who runs some of the biggest names on British high streets. His retail empire includes brands such as Topshop, Topman, Dorothy Perkins, Burton, Miss Selfridge and British Home Stores.

Philip Green is not a non-dom. He lives in the UK. He works in the UK. He pays tax on his salary in the UK. All seems to be in order. Until you realise that Philip Green does not actually own any of the Arcadia group that he spends every day running. Instead, it is in the name of his wife who has not done a single day’s work for the company. Mrs Green lives in Monaco, where she pays not a penny of income tax.

In 2005 Philip Green awarded himself £1.2bn, the biggest paycheck in British corporate history. But this dividend payout was channeled through a network of offshore accounts, via tax havens in Jersey and eventually to Green’s wife’s Monaco bank account. The dodge saved Green, and cost the tax payer, close to £300m. This tax arrangement remains in place. Any time it takes his fancy, Green can pay himself huge sums of money without having to pay any tax.

Before the election, the Lib Dems liked to talk tough on tax avoiders. But as soon as they entered the coalition, this pre-election bluster became just another inconvenient promise they quietly forgot. In August David Cameron appointed the country’s most notorious serial-tax avoider to advise the government on how best to slash public spending. Not a single Lib Dem minister uttered a word of complaint. A Guardian editorial denounced this as “shameful”.

Philip Green’s £285m tax dodge could pay for:

* The full, hiked up £9,000 fees for almost 32,000 students
* Pay the salaries of 20,000 NHS nurses

And if that’s not reason enough to take action against Sir Philip, it is worth noting that he has built his £5bn fortune on the back of sweatshop labour, using Mauritius sweatshops where Sri Lankans, Indians and Bangladeshis toil 12 hours a day, six days a week, for minimal pay.

In the press

* Philip Green is an odd choice for efficiency tsar
* Philip Green’s tax affairs should be investigated, Lib Dem MPs urge
* Sir Philip Green under attack over personal tax affairs
* Vince Cable’s dig at Sir Philip Green’s tax status
* Sir Philip Green tax avoider gets job on the side

Conservative election poster 2010

A few recent news articles about the UK’s Conservative and Liberal-Democrat (Conservative) coalition government – the ConDem’s – brutal attack on the National Health Service.

Labour to force early vote on secret NHS report – Burnham & Thornton | The Labour Party

Labour will force a vote in the House of Lords this Wednesday to put further pressure on the Government to release its assessment of the risks to the NHS posed by its re-organisation.

Last week, the Information Commissioner ordered the release of the Department’s risk register, following pressure by Labour. The Government has fought to keep it out of the public domain and has yet to respond to the ruling.

On Wednesday, Labour will ask the House of Lords to postpone further consideration of the Health & Social Care Bill until the register has been released.

Andy Burnham MP, Labour’s Shadow Health Secretary, has today written to Andrew Lansley requesting immediate release and said:

“Following this ruling, Andrew Lansley has nowhere left to hide. The information is vital to a full understanding of his Bill and the risks it poses to the NHS.

“I have always said that combining the biggest ever reorganisation and facing the financial challenge will expose the NHS to unacceptable risk.

“The ruling clearly said it’s in the public interest to have this information in the public domain. If he digs in and fights this, people will begin to ask what has the Health Secretary has to hide.”

Baroness Thornton, Labour’s Shadow Health Minister, speaking at the start of proceedings this afternoon, described the document’s publication as “completely pertinent” to the passage of the Bill through the Lords. Glenys Thornton called on the Government to make the document readily available before Wednesday, or Labour will force a vote in the Lords to suspend the Bill’s reading until the register is released.
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Express.co.uk – Home of the Daily and Sunday Express | UK News :: Government defeated over NHS reform

The Government has suffered a defeat in the Lords over its controversial health care reforms.

Peers voted by 195 to 183, majority 12, to require the Health Secretary to report on the VAT treatment of supplies by charities providing health care services for the NHS.

It was the first defeat inflicted on ministers during the Health and Social Care Bill’s marathon 14-day report stage.

Moving the amendment to the Bill, Labour’s Lord Patel of Bradford warned of “major inequality” over irrecoverable VAT for charities providing health care services.

He said that while the NHS was able to recover VAT on certain supplies, charities were not.

And when services were transferred from the NHS to the charitable sector there was a “VAT gap” that had to be filled by charitable funds.
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NHS reforms are a ‘pointless waste’ top midwife warns – Telegraph

The NHS reforms are ‘yet another pointless reorganisation’ that will ‘waste’ several billion pounds, the head of the Royal College of Midwives has warned.

Cathy Warwick, chief executive of the College, said the reforms, which will see doctors-led groups handling most of the NHS budget, were ‘risky and ill-thought through’.

Speaking at the annual conference in Brighton, Prof Warwick also attacked the banks, saying irresponsible and reckless behaviour’ had caused the huge national debt and the pensions of public sector workers, including midwives, were being sacrificed to clear the black hole.

She warned that maternity services were being stretched and midwives’ pensions were being sacrificed in order to clear the national debt ’caused by the irresponsible and reckless behaviour of the banks’.

The proportion of NHS money spent on maternity care is at its lowest point since the 1990s, Prof Warwick said, despite the country facing a major baby boom.

She added: “There is a growing disparity between the increasing demands that are made on midwives and the dwindling resources that they have at their disposal.

“This is compounded by a widening gap between the rhetoric about how maternity services should be and the reality that midwives experience on a daily basis.

“When it comes to staffing, the rhetoric is that there are more midwives than ever before.

“The reality in England is that the midwifery shortage is becoming a crisis.

“Yes the number of midwives in England has increased but by nowhere near enough to keep pace with the growth in their workload.”

On funding, she said the rhetoric was that the NHS budget has been maintained and there are no cuts to front line services.

“The reality, as you will know all too well, is that budgets are being squeezed and services are being cut.”
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Post author:dizzy
Post published:15 November 2011
Post category:NHS politics
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Many commentators are critical of private company Circle Health running Hinchingbrooke hospital. Andrew Lansley and Con-Dem scum claim that they are not privatising the NHS…

Circle admits that care at the Hinchingbrooke is at risk:

“Circle’s growth has placed, and its anticipated growth will continue to place, a strain on its managerial, administrative, operational, financial, information technology and other resources and could affect its ability to provide a consistent level of service to its patients.”

Conservative election poster 2010

A few recent news articles about the UK’s Conservative and Liberal-Democrat (Conservative) coalition government – the ConDem’s – brutal attack on the National Health Service.

Andrew Lansley’s NHS is all about private sector hype | John Lister | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk

Circle has little know-how on running a hospital the size of Hinchingbrooke, but that doesn’t seem to bother the government

The government’s decision to sign a 10-year contract worth £1bn for an untested private company to manage the heavily indebted Hinchingbrooke hospital really is the triumph of hype over experience.

The hype has come thick and fast from Circle Healthcare’s smooth-talking boss, former Goldman Sachs banker Ali Parsadoust (known as Ali Parsa), who gives the impression that Circle is some kind of altruistic workers’ co-operative, while in fact it is controlled by private equity and hedge funds. Far from handing control to the workers, Circle takes a negative view of trade unions and will have to resort to old-fashioned cuts in the workforce if it is to generate the “efficiency savings” it needs to put the hospital into surplus.

More hype has come from the architect of the contract, NHS East of England’s director of strategy Dr Stephen Dunn, an enthusiastic advocate of private sector provision (which he denies is privatisation), whose unstinting efforts to secure this deal won him an award this year from HealthInvestor magazine.

But there is little in Circle’s record to justify Dunn’s belief that the company has the expertise to take on a project on the scale of Hinchingbrooke. The company has yet to make a success even of running its two tiny (30-bed) private hospitals, which were extravagantly expensive to build, and has run up six years of losses so far: hardly a good base to take on the bigger challenge of managing of a debt-ridden NHS general hospital 10 times the size and many more times more complex.

Even the NHS workforce that Circle will be attempting to manage at Hinchingbrooke is three times larger than the grand total of 568 people working for the whole Circle group. Only one of the company’s senior managers has any experience of managing an NHS hospital and he has left the company to rejoin the NHS. And so far they have set out no concrete proposals on how they plan to save money and turn around the finances when they take over in February.

The uncertainty over the Hinchingbrooke contract is even greater since Circle will only be paid a share of any surplus the hospital makes. It might not make any. The PCT (and GP commissioners) are trying to cut the numbers of patients treated in hospital, and squeezing down tariffs for treatment as part of the NHS-wide drive to make £20bn of “efficiency savings” by 2014.

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But as it takes over Hinchingbrooke, Circle’s own financial situation is worrying. It has already lost two ISTC contracts: and its £34m-a-year ISTC contract in Nottingham, currently the company’s main income stream, has only two more years to run. In the last three years Circle’s losses were £40m, £20m and £35m. Its new showpiece hospital in Bath has only just begun to generate a modest trickle of income.

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The Hinchingbrooke contract is a gamble with high stakes, and with only slim chances of success: yet remarkably it’s already being discussed as a model for other struggling trusts. Don’t ask for evidence, just go with the private sector hype. That’s the future under Lansley’s NHS.

NHS privateer: Care is at risk / Britain / Home – Morning Star

The first private company to take over the running of an NHS hospital has admitted that patient care may have to take a back seat to its ambition to buy up more public hospitals.

Circle Health, which has been awarded a £1 billion contract to take over the running of Hinchingbrooke hospital in Cambridgeshire, said in a share prospectus that it plans to take over more NHS hospitals, but patient care may be affected.

“As well as the establishment of further independent hospitals, Circle intends to significantly expand its NHS business,” the company states.

“Circle’s growth has placed, and its anticipated growth will continue to place, a strain on its managerial, administrative, operational, financial, information technology and other resources and could affect its ability to provide a consistent level of service to its patients.”

Campaign group Health Emergency and Unison have already raised concerns as to how Circle, which recorded losses of over £27 million from its own clinics last year, can successfully combat the £39m debt run up at Hinchingbrooke.

The latest revelation indicates that Circle is in agreement with its critics.

Unison head of health Christina McAnea said: “Circle’s takeover of Hinchingbrooke is an accident waiting to happen.

“The company is currently in a vulnerable state and the takeover could lead to a second Southern Cross, putting patients at serious risk.

“Their management band is stuffed full of bankers and managers from private industry, who have no experience of health care.

“Yet this is a company now responsible for the lives of hundreds of thousands of patients.

“The hospital could have been kept running for the benefit of patients, rather than profiteers.

“This must not become a precedent for the NHS, or millions more staff and patients will be put at risk.”
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Post author:dizzy
Post published:14 November 2011
Post category:NHS politics
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