Unions to fight public sector cuts; taxpayers looking to see end of non-jobs

The FT is reporting that public sector unions are to fight public sector cuts described by Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg as “painful and controversial”.

Let’s be clear before I continue, however, that I have every sympathy for anyone losing their job, but, sadly, c’est la vie, as the French saying goes. Public sector jobs are historically volatile as they depend on the mood of the country-at-large at the time.

Strangely enough, I can think of another similar job, and I believe with those employees, too, there has been quite a significant (proportionally) turnover of staff. As a brief aside from this post, I would like to suggest the coalition government agrees to reduce the number of MPs by 10%, as per the Conservative Party manifesto.

Why? Well, at present, an MP’s salary is ?65,738 and each receives roughly ?100,000 for staffing. If the number of MPs were to be reduced by 10%, i.e. 65, then salary costs would be reduced (at the present rates) by almost ?4.3m and staffing costs would be reduced by around ?6.5m – thus, a total saving of almost ?11m would be made, per year, for just 65 MPs – not including additional expenses!

(And Labour suddenly wanted to create a second chamber of salary-taking elected representatives, when the current one is costing almost ?107m on just MPs and their staff¹?! 1997 would have been a good time for such a reform, but the focus now needs to be on reducing the deficit.)

Anyway, to return to the original point of my post. Public sector workers are introduced into a volatile working environment from day one. Remember the Department for Education? It was created in 1992, before becoming the Department for Education and Employment in 1995. In 2001 it changed again to the Department for Education and Skills, then in 2007 to the Department for Children, Schools and Families. This year, the department made a full-circle return to being the Department for Education. And remember the Home Office? Of course you do, it still exists, but so too does the Ministry of Justice, which came into existence after the Home Office was split in two.

That good old executive agency HM Land Registry has also taken a hit, its office closures, which could lead to the loss of up to 2,000 jobs, were announced before the election. And let’s not forget those 192 executive non-departmental public bodies (just part of a total 766 quangos) employing over 111,000 people and spending almost ?46.5bn in 2008/2009² – that is where the brunt of the government savings will come, and yes, staffing levels will be affected.

Just as c’est la vie, la vie continue aussi, to continue les paroles fran?aises started at the outset of this article. I have listed above just a small – and hugely limited – summary of a selection of government entities – and believe me, there is a lot more to be seen!

From MPs to government departments, executive agencies to quangos. ?6bn is a very small figure when compared to government expenditure, and there are doubtless many ways costs could be cut back in order to make such a minimal saving.

I will not try to second guess Osborne-Laws’ programme to be released later on today, but I can imagine that the unions will be up in arms, as a few of their members will be suffering at the hands of the blunt axe. However, many of their members’ jobs should never have existed in the first place, and after yesterday’s Sunday Express story about a certain union’s ?100m country mansion, the unions certainly don’t have my sympathy at the moment.

There are so many ways Osborne-Laws can get the cuts right today, and so many ways they can get them wrong. But any attempt to scale back the state and public expenditure can only be welcomed as the coalition government aims to reduce the massive deficit it has inherited and the poor state public finances are in after 13 years of Labour.

Notes

1. It is recognised that, at present, there are just 649 MPs, but the five Sinn F?in MPs who practice abstentionism have not been counted in this sum.

2. Civil Service Public Bodies 2009 report.