In its submission on the forthcoming Comprehensive Spending Review, the TUC says that:
the failure to consult with NHS staff and patients has led to a severe decline in staff morale and increasingly vociferous protest from local communities, the media and opposition parties;
the Government's efficiency programme in the civil service is not working, and is leading to cuts in vital services, including those to some of the most vulnerable members of the community;
the failure to tackle equal pay, particularly by some local councils, is likely to lead to big cuts in local services unless financial help is provided to meet the £5 billion costs of settling claims for back pay and future fair pay deals.
A new Prime Minister must therefore declare a fresh start on public service reform, and should be based on six principles says the TUC submission:
Full and early involvement of staff and unions in the decision-making process;
Sufficient time for reforms to bed in, before further changes are implemented;
Change founded on a sound evidence base and a properly discussed business plan;
Adequate resourcing, with proper funding for equality-proofed pay schemes;
Democratic accountability in the provision of all services, including those delivered privately;
Respect for the public service ethos and the staff commitment that underpins it.
TUC General Secretary Brendan Barber said: 'Public services need a fresh start. A toxic cocktail of deferred pay, service cuts, privatisation, and endless reorganisation has produced a crisis of commitment and morale. Unions back reforms that lead to better services more in touch with today's world, but public service reform is too often done to public servants, not with them.
'A new approach should be on the top of Gordon Brown's in-tray. He should end the jobs cut arms race with the other parties, and instead start a national debate on how best to pay for the modern public services the country needs. He should start by dismissing CBI calls for lower business tax, and move on to examine both the potential for new green taxes and launch a major crackdown on tax avoidance by the super-rich - which has now become a big burden on the hard-working majority who pay their fair share.'
The TUC says the Government has failed to heed Sir Peter Gershon's warning of 'the need to ensure that savings are not delivered at the expense of impacting on service delivery: to go further or faster than the savings set out in my review during the period 2005-06 to 2007-08 would put at risk the delivery of public services.'
The report says that service quality has been reduced across government and provides detailed evidence of the effects on the DWP's work with the unemployed, the work of ACAS, implementing equal pay and the Health and Safety Executive.
DWP cuts include:
reducing the New Deal for Young People to a single option in London and similar cuts across the rest of the country;
stopping development of 'Building on New Deal' (BOND) the next stage of the New Deal that aimed to give the most vulnerable young people extra help and personalised support in seeking work;
cutting back on plans to roll out Pathways to Work, the highly successful scheme to help Incapacity Benefit claimants into unemployment;
cuts in DWP staff mean that 21 million calls have gone unanswered according to the DWP Select Committee;
a further DWP Committee report described the Jobcentre Plus Direct contact centres as a 'catastrophic failure' because savings had been made too quickly;
phone based contact centres replacing the face-to-face contact needed by the most vulnerable.
Other issues covered by the TUC's submission include how best to respond to globalisation, tackling inequality and child poverty, and the need to tackle climate change.
Source: Trades Union Congress
