Four government departments agree to hack 30% from budgets

Photo by Tony Fischer (Creative Commons)

Photo by Tony Fischer (Creative Commons)   (Click to enlarge: opens in new window)

Dave Semple, Public sector worker and union rep

Four essential government departments have signed up to cuts of around 30% over the next four years.

It is barely a week since parliament’s influential Public Accounts Committee derided the government’s management of tax collecting and called for major investment.

Now the treasury – plus the local government, environment and transport departments – have signed up to four years of 8% annual cuts. By the end, each will have shed between 28 and 32% of funding, depending on how figures are calculated.

Ruins

Tory ministers are scrambling over their colleagues – and the ruins of crucial public services – to look like they are helping to cut the deficit. Their reward will be to sit on the committee that slashes departments which haven’t agreed cuts before Chancellor George Osborne’s end-of-year budget statement.

Key responsibilities like flood defences, monitoring local government planning rules, rail safety and animal welfare in the billion-pound food industry will be hit.

90,000 jobs went under the last Tory-led government. Civil servants, particularly in the Public and Commercial Services union (PCS), are looking around at empty desks and failing services in sullen anger.

Our capacity to fight the cuts remains undiminished – despite vicious Tory attacks on our union. The huge and successful effort by National Gallery staff defending terms and conditions – including 110 days’ strike action – proves this.

Workers back a fighting, democratic union. The Tories tried to cripple the PCS by stopping the union collecting membership dues directly from members’ pay – effectively ending their membership. But over 145,000 – nearly the total number affected – have signed back up already.

Faced with mild pressure from the Lords on tax credits, the government hurriedly climbed down, delaying those cuts by three years.

A determined coalition of unions could force a much bigger retreat. The Socialist Party is campaigning for unions to call co-ordinated, escalating strikes against this weak and hated government.