NEWS
The TUC has said it acknowledg- es the current level of the deficit is “unsustainable” but calls for an economic Plan B centred around growth rather than cuts.
At a speech at Bristol Business School on April 7, TUC General Secretary Brendan Barber said: “The TUC are not deficit deniers; we know that borrowing one pound in every four we spend is unsustainable, and we agree that spending more on servicing debt interest than on educating our children is just plain wrong. But we need a Plan B.
“When it comes to getting the deficit down, what matters is
course of this parliament - but TUC research looking at what happened after previous reces- sions suggests it could take the private sector 14 years to create enough jobs to get employment back to pre-recession levels.
Brendan Barber
what works in the long term. My concern is that the Government’s answer, to slash public spending with reckless speed, is based not on a sound reading of the evi- dence, but on an ideological zeal to shrink the size of the state.”
He said the economy needed to
be rebalanced, with the financial system reformed, more manu- facturing and higher wages for ordinary workers compared to managers.
Barber argued: “Ministers be- lieve the private sector will create 2.5 million new jobs during the
“So be in no doubt: we are in a very deep hole. And the Government has bet everything on a colossal gamble - its plan to wipe out our structural deficit in a single par- liament. Instead we need a more realistic timetable for deficit re- duction, with jobs and growth our top priority - keeping people in work, keeping tax revenues flow- ing, limiting the huge social costs of unemployment.”
Bailiffs used millions of times by councils
fishing trips. On the other hand, everything we spent over £50,000 is online, and so it should be.
“There’s also the issue of localism – they can’t have it both ways. The Government goes around preaching about localism then start micro-managing.
“Thirdly, ministers do need to learn that actually they can’t rule by decree. They need the force of law behind them. It’s a question of due process; they’re trying to im- plement this without legislation.
The deputy leader of Nottingham City Council, Graham Chapman, has told PSE why his authority is refusing to go along with the Government’s transparency agen- da after he was attacked over the issue by Communities Secretary during a House of Commons de- bate.
The city council has been threat- ened with legal action over its refusal to disclose all items of spending over £500. Pickles’ Department for Communities and Local Government said Nottingham is now the only hold- out and pledged to “force” the city to accept the transparency agen- da using the Local Government, Planning and Land Act 1980.
Pickles asked: “What has Nottingham got to hide?”
But Cllr Chapman told PSE: “Most of the data we published would be incomprehensible.
“Other councils have said they’ve had to put additional people on to publish this data. At a time when we are trying to protect frontline services, we don’t think it’s a good use of public money. It cre- ates bureaucracy, all in order to provide fishing trip opportunities for the media.
“We are already spending half a million pounds on FoI requests, a lot of which are from trawling national press journalists doing
“As soon as there’s legislation, we’ll abide by it – even though I think it would be a silly piece of gesture legislation.
“Nobody in the city really gives two hoots. We’ve not had a whacking great outcry, and when we tell people the cost of doing it could be up to £100,000…well, I’m thinking of creating a few lol- lipop people with spare money. If it’s a toss up between additional lollipop people, and providing in- comprehensible lists of figures, it’s lollipop people every time.”
Chapman was described as a ‘very naughty boy’ by Pickles during the Commons debate, a reference to his Monty Python namesake.
Councils called in bailiffs six million times last year to collect unpaid parking fines and council tax.
The figures came from an FoI re- quest by civil liberties lobby group Big Brother Watch, which received reports of residents being harassed by debt collectors. Almost 5,500 cases a day are passed to debt recovery agencies by councils in England, Scotland and Wales, it said, with Edinburgh and Glasgow councils at the top of the list.
Daniel Hamilton, director of Big Brother Watch, said: “The Government must act now to end the culture of bully-boy debt collec- tion which has taken hold in town halls across the country.
“Sending in bailiffs to recover debts should always be the absolute last resort.”
Local government minister Grant Shapps promised to deal with the practice, saying: “The Coalition Government will rein in the ag- gressive use of bailiffs, and defend people’s rights and liberties against home invasion.”
public sector executive Mar/Apr 11 | 7
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