Alice Hood
The most sweeping changes to our NHS since its inception were put in place on Monday. But as the new system grinds into gear the fight continues, including an immediate battle over the competition regulations at the heart of the ‘reforms’. There’s a chance to defeat this core element of the Government’s plans in Parliament this month, and we’re asking supporters to contact MPs and members of the House of Lords to ensure that they act.
Owen Tudor
Another report on the Home Office’s troubled record over immigration (this time from the Home Affairs Select Committee), another reorganisation of the service. I can’t remember how many times the Borders Agency and its predecessors have been rearranged, but I’m pretty sure that the solution now proposed will not – amazingly – be perfect, when so many other cunning plans have all failed.
The TUC joined PCS, the union representing most of the people working in the service, in suggesting that the real issue is lack of resources. Yet another reorganisation will probably make matters worse, by using up more of the little money that’s left after successive cuts and increased workload.
Alice Hood
Public service pay was squeezed yet further in the Budget.
Most public sector workers have faced a two-year pay freeze – three years in local government - followed by the prospect of two years with increases capped at a measly 1 per cent, leaving real wages and living standards falling. Today the Chancellor announced yet another year of average increases capped at 1 per cent. And in the small print of the Budget document (p73) he sneaked in an extra year on top of that for some civil servants. Some groups of civil servants (such as the Department for Work and Pensions’ 95,000-strong workforce, including many low-paid Jobcentre staff) entered the pay freeze ahead of the rest of the public sector so would have expected to come out of the cap in 2014. But Osborne has slipped a fourth year of pay capped well below inflation for these workers into his Budget plans.
Craig Berry
The increase in National Insurance revenue made possible by the abolition of the rebates associated with ‘contracting out’ from the second state pension, which the Chancellor has decided to bring forward by a year to 2016, provides the funds for many of Budget 2013’s most eye-catching announcements. The government will say this is simply moving money around the public sector, but in practice it will produce a further squeeze on public services.
Craig Berry
Growth has been revised down significantly, but from 2016 onwards, National Insurance (NI) revenues will start to climb substantially – that’s what the Office for Budget Responsibility’s new economic and fiscal outlook is telling us. I think we are in danger of having the wool pulled over our eyes.
Alice Hood
A flurry of activity by unions, health specialists, politicians and campaigners has borne fruit today, with the announcement that the Government will re-write the NHS competition regulations that have caused such a furore. But vigilance will be needed to make sure the government can’t get away with a watered-down version of the same thing.
As I wrote last week, the regulations would have had the effect of forcing NHS services into compulsory competitive markets. They undermined assurances given by ministers during the debates on the Health Act, and could have come into law without so much as a debate or a vote had they followed the usual process set out by the government.
When the TUC asked people to write in about the regulations last week, so we could share concerns with a key Lords scrutiny committee, thousands of people responded in just a few hours. Thousands have also lobbied MPs in what was one of the biggest responses we’ve seen to an online action.
Matt Dykes
This week has seen plenty of focus on the continuing stagnation of the UK economy, with the government failing its own arbitrary credit-rating test and the ONS confirming virtually no growth last year.
Yet beyond the acute economic problems, the UK is also in the midst of a very real ‘social recession’. As with the economy, the double whammy of crisis and austerity is plunging public services across the country into a vicious circle of decline.
Alice Hood
Secretary of State for Health Jeremy Hunt has proposed new regulations under section 75 of the Health and Social Care Act. The Act became law last March after a long and hard-fought campaign, and these regulations (SI 257) are secondary legislation. This means they’re assumed to simply deliver the detail of the original Act and so, left alone, they would become law on 1 April without a debate or a vote.
But the regulations go far beyond the warm words of ministers during the passage of the Health and Social Care Act. They attempt to sneak a big step towards privatisation through the back door.
Alice Hood
Amid the grim news from the Autumn Statement, many public sector workers will have breathed a rare sigh of relief when the Chancellor announced that the government would not be pressing ahead with local or regional pay in the NHS, civil service or prisons. But teachers have been singled out for a divisive and damaging experiment with what effectively amounts to individualised pay.
The Chancellor said:
“We are today publishing the reports we commissioned from the pay review bodies on market-facing pay. We commit to implement these reports. This means continuing with national pay arrangements in the NHS and Prison Service, and we will not make changes to the civil service arrangements either.
But the School Teachers’ Review Body does recommend much greater freedom to individual schools to set pay in line with performance. And the Education Secretary will set out how this will be implemented.”
The climbdown on regional pay in health, prisons and the civil service is hugely important. A broad alliance including MPs of all parties, councils of all stripes, the public, academics (£) and businesses as well as trade union members from public and private sectors spoke out against the proposals. The economic damage, risks to services and unfairness of the idea were compounded by the lack of evidence to support it from economic theory or private sector practice.
Matt Dykes
The Treasury’s review of the Private Finance Initiative was aimed at finding a “new approach to delivery” that is “less expensive, and that uses private sector innovation to deliver services more cost effectively”.
As such the new approach unveiled in the Chancellor’s Autumn Statement is underwhelming. As Richard Abadie, PwC’s global head of infrastructure, put it:
“The new PF2 model appears similar to the alleged “discredited” PFI model. Besides the change in name, the core of the model i.e. using private finance to finance construction and getting repaid over a long period of time, remains the same and will be welcomed by local and international contractors, investors and lenders.”
With a spread of around 7 per cent between the weighted average cost of capital for a PFI project of around 9 per cent and a long term gilt rate of around 2 per cent, the use of private finance remains very much the expensive option for the UK taxpayer.
