100 days - 100 cuts that hit the vulnerable
Some of the UK's poorest families have been hit by more than 100 unfair spending cuts during the first 100 days of the new Government, a TUC analysis of departmental spending reveals today (Wednesday). The TUC research, published in advance of the 100 day anniversary of the coalition Government tomorrow (Thursday), shows that cuts which impact more on the poorest families in the UK have been made across the board in services including education, health, housing, welfare and social care.

Examples of cuts the TUC believes are unfair include:
•Free school meals - The cancelled measure would have extended entitlement to free school meals to about 500,000 families in work on low pay from September this year. Cost £125m.
•Every child a reader - This programme to provide early support to children with literacy difficulties (focussed on inner-city schools) will be cut by at least £5m and its future is not guaranteed.
•City Challenge Fund - This programme aimed to provide extra support to under-performing children in the most deprived areas, but has been cut by £8m this year.
•Building Schools for the Future - This scrapped programme was the biggest-ever school buildings investment plan. The aim was to rebuild or renew nearly every secondary school in England. Cost £7.5bn.
•Housing benefit - Nearly a million (936,960) households will lose around £624 a year as a result of changes to housing benefit. Londoners will be worst hit.
•Homes and Communities Agency - Cuts to programmes including Kickstart (for restarting stalled house building programmes), affordable housing, gypsy and traveller support and Housing Market Renewal (improvements to housing in deprived areas). Cost £450m.
•Young Person's Guarantee - £450m has been cut from the Guarantee, which will be abolished in April 2011. This Guarantee promised unemployed young people access to a job, training or work after six months of unemployment.
•Working Neighbourhood Fund - This fund, which aimed to help unemployed people in deprived areas to move into work, has been cut by £49.9m.
•Domestic Violence Protection Orders - Scheme to create two-week banning orders so that victims of domestic abuse can look for protection in the safety of their own house.
The TUC is calling on the Government to reconsider its plan of swingeing spending cuts to public services, and focus instead on other ways to reduce the deficit, such as a Robin Hood Tax on financial transactions that could raise up to £20bn a year.

The TUC is also a member of a coalition, which includes Barnardo's, Oxfam and Save the Children, who want the Government to guarantee that any future budget cuts will be put through rigorous fairness testing - or a Fairness Test - by the Treasury, to ensure that vulnerable people, low-paid workers, women and children are not left to bear the brunt of spending cuts. TUC General Secretary Brendan Barber said: 'Before the election we were told that cuts could be achieved through efficiency savings, that the most vulnerable would be protected and front-line services preserved. These pledges have not lasted 100 days. 'What makes this worse is that these cuts are doing the opposite of what the Government intends. Far from securing the economic recovery, they are slamming on the economic brakes. Growth will be well below potential and there is growing risk of a double-dip recession. 'We can only conclude that at least parts of the coalition are using the deficit as an excuse to secure the cuts in public services that they know that voters would have overwhelmingly rejected if faced with a manifesto that promised slash and burn. 'There is an alternative with policies designed to promote growth and to close the deficit with taxes that target those who did so well out of the boom years and have have already escaped the recession. 'The TUC wants a Fairness Test to be introduced by the Treasury to ensure that cuts do not unfairly impact on the poorest in society - which would increase inequality in a Britain which is already at its most divided in income levels for half a century.'

15,000 justice ministry jobs at risk, claims union. BBC news 10/09/10
Fifteen thousand jobs could be lost at the Ministry of Justice, a union has warned - after a letter revealed plans to cut £2bn from its budget. The Public and Commercial Services Union says 15,000 of the Department's 80,000 jobs are at risk. With £4bn of the department's £9bn budget fixed for legal aid and prison costs, the cuts could bring courts "to a standstill", the PCS said. Finance chief Ann Beasley's letter says "efficiencies... will not be enough".

Ms Beasley, the director general of finance for the ministry, said in her letter to senior colleagues that "many savings will have to be made quickly, within the first 12-24 months". She added: "Efficiencies alone will not be enough. It will mean we have to look at every opportunity to work differently and better. It will also mean there will have to be less of us."Staff would be "understandably concerned" so, she writes, "it is important that you take every opportunity to talk to them, listen to their concerns, invite their ideas and views and be honest about what we do and don't know and when we will tell them more".

The main areas of the Ministry of Justice's responsibilities are the courts system and prisons as well as other areas such as data protection and the Information Commissioner. The PCS said the cuts would be the "equivalent to the entire budget for prisons, or the money the department spends each year on courts and tribunals". It said the letter was the "first indication of the true scale of cuts" the coalition was imposing. PCS general secretary Mark Serwotka said: "This is the first indication of the true scale of the cuts being imposed upon departments by this coalition government, and it paints a devastating picture.

Nick McCarthy, from the Public and Commercial Services Union, on concern over the cuts "It is clear that the civil service will simply not be able to cope. We will take every opportunity to remind the government and the public that there is an alternative and these politically-motivated cuts are entirely avoidable."

Hundreds of playground schemes mothballed
BBC News education and family reporter

Mr Gove says play is a key area to be affected by cuts Hundreds of community playground schemes in England are being axed or scaled back because of government cuts. Education Secretary Michael Gove has frozen grants to 122 councils for building and running up to 1,300 schemes, many designed by youngsters. Only schemes where construction has already started are to be allowed. The government said it had inherited unrealistic spending commitments.

The £235m Playbuilder scheme was started more than two years ago. It was launched under Labour to develop 3,500 playgrounds designed by and for the communities they were to serve. Each local council was given cash to build 22 play areas. Some of these have now been built. This year, grants for over 1,300 playgrounds in 93 local authorities had been approved. The Department for Education could not say exactly how many playgrounds would be scrapped as it is only now collecting information about which schemes are in construction. It has warned local councils not to incur any more costs on schemes and said it will review closely any commitments already made. In his letter to the heads of children's services, Mr Gove named play as a key area affected by his department's contribution to reducing the public deficit. He said he was reducing funding for play projects to protect frontline education services. He also scrapped targets for the number of play facilities councils have to provide, and removed the protection from playground building budgets, saying any unspent money could be retained by his department.

Campaigners say that in the current financial climate this means play facilities are likely to bear the brunt of budget cuts. Steve Chown, programme development manager at the charity commissioned to aid councils with their schemes, Play England, said many schemes would not now go ahead. He said: "Communities are going to be disappointed that these play areas that they have worked so hard to set up are not now going forward. "There would have been nine months to go on the programme, so there would have been quite a lot of organisations who were just ready to start building."

Fraud 'a cover for hurting the poor'
Monday 09 August 2010 Mrning Star
Mr Cameron has described benefit fraud and error as "the one area of ingrained waste that outranks all others" Trade unionists have accused David Cameron of using benefit fraud as "cover for swingeing cuts to genuine claimants." Speaking last week Mr Cameron described benefit fraud and error as "the one area of ingrained waste that outranks all others." However the TUC said that, while all fraud should be condemned, the cost of benefit fraud was dwarfed by that of tax evasion and avoidance.

Mr Cameron claimed benefit fraud and errors cost the country £5.2 billion annually. However the National Fraud Authority cites government figures for 2008-9 which show losses through benefit fraud of £1.1bn. The most recent figure from the organisation Tax Research put the figures for combined tax evasion and avoidance at £95bn. A TUC spokesman said: "All fraud is wrong and should be tackled, but benefit fraud accounts for less than 1 per cent of benefit spending and is dwarfed by the amount lost to tax evasion. "If the government is serious about raising revenue it should put more resources into tackling tax evasion rather than using benefit fraud as a cover for swingeing cuts to genuine claimants."

The PM was also criticised for the government's brutal public-service cuts and his failure to tackle the drain on the economy of the financial sector. Writing in the Sunday Times Mr Cameron said: "Even with reform, the truth is there will be some things that we genuinely value that will have to go because of the legacy we have been left. "I don't like that any more than anyone else, but this is the reality of the situation we're in and it's the duty of this government to face up to it."

But campaigners argued that the imposition of a banking tax would remove the need for the savage public-sector cuts. On Monday, the Robin Hood Tax campaign announced the launch of its own costs consultation mimicking the government's "spending challenge" which seeks suggestions on which cuts should be made to reduce the deficit. Campaign spokesman Max Lawson said: "Massive cuts in public spending have been presented by the government as necessary for the UK to balance its books, but we believe that there is a better alternative. "A Robin Hood Tax on the financial sector could raise at least £20bn a year in the UK and part of the revenue raised could go towards helping reducing the deficit, making the worst cuts unnecessary. "It would target a sector that has played a key role in creating the mess which we are in and has the resources to pay as the big profits and bonuses announced recently show. "The government cannot claim that we are all in this together unless it makes the financial sector pay a proper part in filling the hole in the nation's budget."

BBC News 10 August 2010
Pension changes 'are a nightmare', experts warn
Many current pensioners have been promised increases linked to RPI A group of pension industry experts has attacked plans to link private pension increases to the Consumer Prices Index measure of inflation. The experts say many pensioners have been promised annual rises linked to the Retail Prices Index. Philip Read, chairman of British Coal pension trustees, said retrospective legislation could breach their human rights and would be a "nightmare". The government suggested the change to inflation proofing last month.

Members of an online forum for pensions experts, Mallowstreet, have written to the government, claiming the change has been imposed on the industry and that a full consultation period is required. The experts on the online forum include Andrew Swan, from M&G Investments, and Karen Wake from ACE insurance. However, the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) rejected this, saying that the benefits of public and private pensions needed to be consistent.

The government had "already decided that CPI is the most appropriate measure of inflation for state benefits, [and] it is appropriate to take a consistent approach for private pensions", said a DWP spokesman. "As the change affects the requirement for statutory minimum increases, schemes may continue to make more generous provision," it added. "No consultation was therefore considered to be necessary." The CPI measure of inflation has generally risen by 0.7% a year less than RPI. Pensions linked to CPI will be lower over a period of time - some estimates put the drop as high as 25%." In the next five years the gap between the two is likely to be even higher, at 1.2% a year, according to data from the recently established Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR).

The government now intends to use CPI for the uprating of state pensions, state benefits and also for the inflation-related increases built into the big public sector pension schemes. These changes will lead to a huge saving in the government's pension costs. "Pensions linked to CPI will be lower over a period of time - some estimates put the drop as high as 25%", said Dawid Konotey-Ahulu of Mallowstreet.

The government's powers over private sector occupational schemes are limited as these are governed by their own rules, which in many cases have links to RPI "hard-wired" into them. Actuarial firm Hewitt Associates has looked at the rules of 168 schemes which are its clients. In 73% of cases, the rules state that pensions in payment have a link to RPI, with just 10% using whatever the government's preferred measure might be, and 17% have some other sort of measure altogether. For pensions in deferment though, where someone has left employment but has not yet drawn their pension, the government may have more sway. Only 12% of the schemes on which Hewitt advises had increases linked to RPI, while 70% state that the link would be decided by the government.

Welfare: Can the Tories save billions in benefits?
From an article by By Mark Easton, Home editor, BBC News

Throughout the election campaign the BBC's expert team of journalists is examining the key claims made by politicians and assessing what their policies and promises mean to you. Welcome to Reality Check. Today I'm taking a close look at the Conservative pledge to cut billions from the welfare bill.

The party says that benefit fraud and error has cost £80 every second under Labour. Their answer is what they call a "crackdown" on cheats. Anyone who is cautioned or convicted of benefit fraud three times will have their payments stopped for up to three years. So how much will their "three strikes and you're out" policy actually save? We asked the Conservatives and they said "We can't say", so I have attempted to do the sums instead.

How many people have been convicted of benefit fraud three times? The Department for Work and Pensions tells me the answer is... zero. No-one. Ever.
How many have had their benefits stopped after two convictions? Last year the figure was 69 people. Stopping their benefits for twice as long, as the Tories propose, would save roughly £100,000 a year or less than one penny a second. Thus reducing the cost from £80 a second to £79.99. Even if we include those people cautioned as well as convicted, it is clear that this proposal is not going to save much money. The Conservatives' bigger promises on welfare rely on saving £600m within three years. Not by targeting cheats, but getting people off Incapacity Benefit (IB). Basically, the Tories argue that one in five of the 2.6 million people currently on IB is fit for work. That's just over half-a-million claimants. They would be moved onto Jobseekers Allowance which gives them about £1,300 a year less.

The government is already planning to do the same thing and last month calculated moving people off IB would save £300m a year over the next five years. The Conservatives' figures suggest a saving of £200m a year - significantly less than Labour. But there's a problem with both figures. They are based on an assumption that significant numbers can be moved off IB. But no-one knows if that is right because it's not been tried. We do know that with new claimants, a quarter of those told they were fit to work appealed against the decision, and of those, more than a third had their appeal upheld.

Neil Coyle of the Disability Alliance prefers to get benefits right the first time and believes the policy would hit the vulnerable. He prefers to get benefits right first time. Both Labour and the Conservatives believe that getting tough with benefit claimants goes down well with voters. But if the consequence of reform is thousands of vulnerable individuals with long-term health conditions being treated unfairly, it's a policy with built-in dangers.

Unions reveal coalition's grand plan for health service in-house bids
NHS workers are being ignored as managers rush to opt out of the service under the coalition government's "social enterprise" initiative, health unions have warned. The schemes, labelled "a half-way house to the privatisation of the NHS" by the union, were touted by the coalition as a way of handing power to the people who provide services. However Unison warned that front-line staff at 15 projects set to be hived off under plans announced by Care Services Minister Paul Burstow on Monday have had little say in their fate. Those affected provide services for children, young people and adults, health promotion and prevention, long-term care and rehabilitation, mental health, and disabled services.

Unite union regional officer Michael Tuff said that the "overwhelming majority" of 1,200 staff at one of the sections affected, Shropshire Primary Care Trust, had already voted against the proposal - but the plans are set to go ahead anyway. "The trust agreed to hold a ballot and then when the staff rejected the social enterprise plan they ignored the wishes of staff," he said. Unison's senior national officer for health Mike Jackson likened the schemes to management buy-outs rather than staff buy-ins. "There is clearly very little interest from NHS staff in setting up the social enterprise," he said. "That is because they are a massive business risk, do not help patients and will bring private health companies in to do NHS work. "With the country in the midst of a financial crisis, the government is playing Russian roulette with healthcare by hiving NHS services off into small organisations, to try their luck against the big private health-care companies. "They risk business failure, takeover, or losing their contracts after the three year period is up."

The Department of Health's Right to Request initiative gives NHS employees the right to ask their local primary care trust to set up a social enterprise to sub-contract NHS services. The first 20 social enterprises were announced last November and applications for the second wave are being accepted up to this November, when a fresh wave of targets will be revealed.
Morning Star article 04/08/10

More than 900,000 families set to lose £12 a week in housing benefit
TUC analysis of June's Emergency Budget published today (Thursday) reveals that 936,960 households across the UK will each lose around £12 a week (£624 a year) as a result of changes to housing benefit (HB) announced in the Budget. Cuts to the local housing allowance will hit almost everyone in private rented housing on the benefit, says the TUC. The analysis of figures from the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) reveals that regionally, the largest cuts will be in London where 159,370 families will see their HB cut by £22 a week, adding up to a loss of £1,144 a year. Another 123,000 households in the South East will lose £12 a week (£624 a year), while 58,680 families in the East Midlands, 70,970 families in the East of England, 130,900 families in the North West and 83,180 families in the South West will lose £10 a week (£520 a year).

The proposed cuts, due to come into force in April 2011, include:
the restriction of the bedroom entitlement to four bedroom rates;
capping the amount that can be claimed under local housing allowance (LHA) at between £250 and £400 a week (depending on property size); and
removing a £15 a week excess payment for tenants who find a good deal on rents.
From October 2011, LHA rents will also be calculated on the 30th percentile of private sector rents rather than the median.

TUC General Secretary Brendan Barber said: 'This cut in housing benefit will make a real difference to some of our poorest and most vulnerable families, and will affect nearly one million households. 'Families in London will find themselves out of pocket to the tune of £1,144 a year, and households all over the UK will be left much worse off. 'The Chancellor promised 'not to hide any hard choices from the British people or bury them in the small print of the Budget documents', but this is another reminder that we are very definitely not all in this together. 'While the rich have been let off, families are being left to pick up the cost of the recession.'

Myth:
Health and safety bans bunting

The reality
There are no regulations banning people from hanging bunting at weddings and village fetes or flying flags for sporting events. HSE encourages people to have a bit of common sense about their attitudes to risk, not to make everything risk-free. There won't be an army of inspectors cutting down bunting or insisting flags are lowered.

HSE exists to prevent people being killed or seriously injured at work, not to stop people celebrating in style.

Council homes for life could go, says Cameron
In some cases council houses were handed down through generations, David Cameron said Council houses should be allocated on fixed-term deals rather than being granted automatically "for life", David Cameron has said. The prime minister added that it was important tenants had the opportunity to move to find work, requiring more flexibility in the system. Those who succeed in getting better-paid jobs should be encouraged into the private housing sector, he said.

Labour said what was needed was "more secure homes, not less". Mr Cameron said he expected a "big argument" over the proposals. The prime minister said fixed-term deals for tenants would allow people to move on if their circumstances changed.

So says the party that sold off council houses, and now they say it's important people have the opportunity t move to find work. More of the Tebbit approach of get on your bike! It's all about forcing more people into the private sector, another example of political ideology winning out over peoples needs.

Changes to Reach payments
Virgin Media has been discussing with the CWU the changes now announce to staff regarding the Reach scheme for the rest of this year. In a nutshell Virgin media wished to change the productivity bonus to being attendance related. Although the CWU acknowledges that there is an element of attendance to the current scheme, this is not something we support. Originally, Virgin Media were seeking to implement this for Q2, and although they were saying that no body would lose money as a result, we opposed the backdating of any criteria that is not known to people in advance. We suggested to Virgin media, that they should recognise the fact that the service technicians have borne the brunt of the problems involved in the roll-out of the PDA and have also shown great flexibility and willingness to support the company, particularly in the run up to the World Cup. We suggested they took the remaining bonus pot and paid it out for Q2 amongst all the service techs.

We are pleased that they have agreed to this and that, unless you were exempt under the usual criteria, you will receive an extra bonus payment. We remain unhappy that attendance is the criteria that will apply until Reach has been reviewed and overhauled. We expect that we will be meeting the company next month to discuss planned changes to the scheme and they have advised they expect to be in a position to introduce the new scheme from January 2010. Clearly the scheme is in desperate need of an overhaul – we will be looking for something that is simpler, fairer and easier to understand.

Call –out Allowances – Networks
We have been hitting a brick wall on the commitment we had from the company to review the call –out allowances. The management acknowledge that this is an issue for the Network technicians but also state that they have these arrangements elsewhere in the company and there is no push from anywhere else in the business to have them changed. Virgin media believe they pay market rates, but we are disputing that and also the structure of the way in which call-out is paid. We will be continuing to pursue this issue with the company.

Elections
Your new committee held its first meeting last week and discussed a number of issues, including those above, pay, grading and shift patterns. We will be issuing a newsletter reminding you of who your local rep is and we recommend that you get in touch with them to raise any issues you have or to give them feedback – they rely on you to be able to represent you properly. The committee meets quarterly and also has a negotiating team which meets the company. If you do not have a rep in your area, why not consider standing?

The more members we have, the stronger we are in negotiations and in your area. Please help to grow your union and ensure we grow our influence in all Virgin Media issues.

We can pay our people properly
Public servants' union PCS have gone on the offensive over pensions, declaring them to be "affordable and sustainable" despite scaremongering about their cost.

PCS submitted compelling evidence to the government's review on public-sector pensions, busting claims that they are overgenerous and unaffordable. A report by the Public Sector Pensions Commission this month urged the government to raise employee and employer contributions to pay for the size of public-sector pension liabilities. But the union rejected those findings, arguing that an earlier 2008 Treasury report had found pensions amounted for only 1 per cent of GDP, projected to rise by only 1.2 per cent by 2057. And the National Audit Office (NAO) reported recently: "When projections of liability are based on earnings, the total annual payments from the Civil Service pension scheme will be largely stable over the next 50 years."

Coupled with the pay freeze announced in the emergency Budget in June and potentially 600,000 jobs being cut in the public sector alone, PCS said the modest pensions that members take in retirement will be affordable. Its general secretary Mark Serwotka said: "We totally reject the premise for this review, that our members' pensions are unaffordable and unreformed, and we have made this case very clearly to the Hutton commission. "There is an alternative to cutting public spending that will help our economy to grow, and we believe this is the most effective and sustainable way to ensure we can continue to pay the pensions of hard-working and loyal public servants in future years." PCS has long campaigned for a clampdown on big business tax avoidance which loses the Treasury an estimated £120 billion each year.

The Prospect union's pensions officer Neil Walsh said: "By presenting the figures in terms of an annual percentage of gross domestic product the NAO have brought clarity to a issue which other partisan groups often seek to bury in alarming multibillion-pound liability figures. "The report makes it clear that public-sector pensions are far from being the unsustainable burden on current or future generations of taxpayers they are often portrayed as." PCS has held several protests over the austerity measures including outside the Treasury in June.

With workers facing the prospect of swingeing cuts and a savage assault on pensions, PCS declared its intention to encourage "co-ordinated action" in conjunction with other public-sector unions. A spokesman added: We are looking at this very much in the context of a wider attack on jobs and pay in the public sector. "It is our conference policy to have a co-ordinated campaign around jobs, pay and pensions. We call on the TUC to co-ordinate a day of action in October around these issues."

Pensions •The change in indexation from RPI to CPI immediately reduced the value of public service pensions by tens of billions of pounds.
•The NAO's report also shows that civil service pension scheme payments accounted for approximately 0.3% of GDP in 2009/10 and are projected to account for approximately 0.3% of GDP in 2059/60. The 2007 reform of the Civil Service pension scheme was designed to put the scheme on a sustainable footing for the long term and the NAO confirms this objective has been met.
•Low-paid workers faced with increasing contributions are more likely to leave the pension scheme, thus placing longer-term pressure on the welfare system.
From The Morning Star 31/07/10

The latest HSE Fatal Injury Statistics 2009/10 is available on the Health & safety page

Carer Watch statement
With the recent Emergency budget from the new Coalition Government, we find Disability Living Allowance is now under threat. We ask the Coalition to make a clear statement about the level of welfare benefit support that they intend to offer disabled people and their carers in these very challenging times. Disability Living Allowance was specifically named in the Emergency Budget as a benefit that was being targeted and where substantial savings could be made. Many groups/organisations representing the disabled people and carers are reporting that this has caused an immediate wave of anxiety and concern.

DLA is an essential benefit that was specifically designed to provide financial support towards the extra costs incurred by people living with a disability. DLA payments have enabled hundreds of thousands of disabled people to maintain a degree of independence and quality of life that would have otherwise been lost to them. Because Middle and Higher rate DLA are both also passport benefits to enable family members to claim Carers Allowance, removing or reducing DLA will not only have an enormous financial impact on disabled people it will also impact on their carers - a double blow which will especially hit hard those families on the poverty line. It is even more alarming that the Coalition plan a new regime of 'non medical tests ' as happened with Employment Support Allowance.. A 'test' which was designed to throw 1 million people off sickness benefit altogether. It is a 'test' you are planned to fail. Of course we want the aspiration of work to be open to disabled people and carers but with rising unemployment coupled with cuts to social care support services, realistically how many will find work and how soon? We are concerned that the most severely and enduringly ill people will be subject to threats and sanctions for not finding work and have incomes reduced as a result.

Carer watch are a campaign group for carers across the UK run by independent, unpaid carers. We have experience of the care system as it operates in the UK today and we consider it to be desperately under funded and not fit for purpose. We aim to provide a non-party-political campaign platform to change the way that opinion-formers, politicians and journalists think about carers.
For more information or to offer support go to www.carerwatch.com

Budget changes have slashed public sector pensions
An eighty year old pensioner with an average public sector pension would be more than £650 a year worse off if the budget change to the indexing of pensions had been in force since their retirement, according to new calculations from the TUC released Wednesday. A little noticed budget announcement changed the figure used to uprate public sector pensions from the RPI inflation measure to CPI. As CPI is normally lower than RPI, public sector pensioners will usually get a smaller increase when their pensions are annually uprated. Using official figures for CPI and RPI over the last twenty years, the TUC has calculated that an eighty year old pensioner on the average public sector pension of £5,500 who has been retired for twenty years would now have a pension of £4,845 a year - 12 per cent or £655 less - if CPI uprating had been in force since their retirement.

A public service pensioner who has been retired for ten years would now have a pension 8.4 per cent lower. Despite this change, public sector staff are still being told that their pensions will be linked to RPI. The guide to the Teachers' pension scheme says that: 'Your pension will be increased to take into account increases in the cost of living. This is called 'index-linking' because the increases are related to rises in the Retail Price Index.' TUC General Secretary Brendan Barber said: 'On the day that the Institute of Directors is due to launch a further attack on public sector pensions, this TUC research shows that public sector pensioners have already been hit hard in the budget. Changing just one letter from R to C means that public sector pensioners will have a little shaved off their pension increase most years. This soon mounts up and older pensioners will in future find their pensions slashed. What makes this worse is that public sector staff have been told their pensions would be linked to RPI inflation. This has been changed without any negotiation or consultation. Significant changes were negotiated in public sector pensions just a few years ago and the Budget has cut benefits further. Yet Treasury figures endorsed by the National Audit Office and the Office of Budget Responsibility show that even before these budget changes, public sector pensions is the only cost associated with our aging society that holds steady over the next four decades. The real pensions crisis in the UK is the retreat by employers from providing pensions in the private sector - and the big unexpected looming bill for tax-payers is the cost of means-tested benefits for the millions let down by their employers. It is not surprising that employer organisations want to change the subject by attacking public sector pensions.'

Ministers say that CPI inflation is a more appropriate measure for pension indexing because pensioners are less likely to have a mortgage. But this fails to take into account council tax, often a heavy burden for pensioners, the effects of the different method of calculating CPI and other research that shows that inflation has been higher for pensioners than for average households in recent years, says the TUC. Research for the Institute of Fiscal Studies has shown that the basic state pension increased by lessthan pensioner inflation in 2006, 2007 and 2008, and even the guarantee element of the pension credit, uprated in line with average earnings, fell relative to pensioner inflation in both 2007 and 2008.

Employers' retreat from providing staff pensions is a national scandal
Commenting on the Public Sector Pensions Commission report, launched today (Wednesday) at the Institute for Directors, TUC General Secretary Brendan Barber said: 'Britain's real pensions scandal is the retreat by employers from providing pensions. Two out of three private sector workers get no employer support towards a pension. Yet here we have the representatives of those employers coming after public sector pensions too. Of course all pensions need to change from time to time, but this report is from people who simply want to reduce taxes for business and the super-rich. They have nothing to say about top Directors' pensions, which have continued to go up during the recession and whose most common retirement age is 60. The Institute of Directors are fond of talking about pension apartheid, but their campaign to drag the public sector down to the level their members have imposed on the private sector workforce makes them very unconvincing Nelson Mandelas.'