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Newcastle-Upon-Tyne East

 

Name: Nick Brown

Party: Labour

Contact details: nickbrown4mp@gmail.com


This candidate has not yet responded please complete the e-action form and ask them to reply to our 5 pledges.

Name: Domonic Llewellyn

Party: Conservative

Contact details: dom@votedom.com


This candidate has not yet responded please complete the e-action form and ask them to reply to our 5 pledges.

Name: Wendy Taylor

Party: Lib Dem

Contact details: wendy.taylor@newcastle.gov.uk


I pledge to work to ensure that public services are properly resourced and delivered by the public sector and that there are no further local office closures, public sector cuts or privatisation.

As a doctor, I certainly support proper resourcing of public services & in many cases these are best delivered by the public sector. I would certainly work to protect public services, but I don’t however think that with the current dire economic situation any political party could promise never to have any cuts or closures. I would hope these could be kept to a minimum. I would never support privatisation for the sake of it like the Tories, but some services can be well run by the private sector provided workers are transferred with TUPE agreements, there is close scrutiny by the public sector & contracts are very strictly controlled.

I pledge to support measures aimed at closing the UK tax gap, including recruiting HMRC staff and ensuring tax loopholes are closed.

I fully support Lib Dem proposals to close tax loopholes & ensure everyone pays their fair share of taxes & therefore agree with this pledge

I pledge to support civil service national pay bargaining and to press the government to offer pay increases at least in line with inflation.

I’m happy to support national pay bargaining, but there is a need for pay restraint at present to help deal with the huge gap in public finances. Lib Dem policy is to restrict any pay rises in the public sector to no more than £400 for the next 2 years. This would be of most benefit to lower paid workers, who would also benefit from Lib Dem tax proposals for no tax on the first £10,000 of earnings.

I pledge to urge the government to honour the 2005 commitment on public sector pensions and to defend the rights of existing members of the civil service compensation scheme.


Liberal Democrats believe that a pension promise made should be a pension promise kept & would not make any changes to pension rights that have already been accrued by public sector workers. Looking forward, I do believe that there is a need to take a measured look at whether the design of public sector schemes for future accruals is fair and sustainable both for public sector workers and to taxpayers as a whole. I believe that some of the highest earners at the top of the public sector have received very substantial pension pay-offs which are very difficult to justify in the present economic climate.
I do think the CSCS needs reform, but the Government’s proposals contain a number of areas which I believe are unfair to civil servants, particularly in comparison with other public sector schemes. The final version of the CSCS includes some welcome changes, particularly those aimed at the lowest paid, but I still have concerns about changes to the rules affecting people within five years of pension age. I do hope that some agreement can be reached on appropriate changes.
I pledge to campaign to ensure any changes to public services are only made after proper equality impact assessments have been conducted and their findings implemented.


I fully support this pledge
 

Name: Andrew Gray

Party: Green

Contact details: green4newcastleeast@bluyonder.co.uk


1) I pledge to work to ensure that public services are properly
resourced and delivered by the public sector and that there are no
further local office closures, public sector job cuts or
privatisations.

Public services are essential to our society, and to the fairness and
sustainability agenda that is at the heart of Green thinking.

So I give a resounding yes to the first part of this pledge. In principle, we need to expand the public sector to meet our manifesto commitments, because we have come to rely too much on the private and voluntary sectors for the provision of public goods and services. But I could not honestly say that there would be no job cuts anywhere in the public services under our policies.

Our manifesto costings envisage 2-3bn pound savings over the entire
public service each year (c0.25%), in particular by improving energy
efficiency in schools and hospitals. Other savings and taxation
proposals within the manifesto enable us to reduce the deficit over 5
years at the same rate as Labour.

2) I pledge to support measures aimed at closing the UK tax gap
including recruiting HMRC staff and ensuring tax loopholes are
closed.

Yes, preventing tax evasion (whether via loopholes, poor enforcement
or use of tax havens) is essential for funding our programmes and
building a fairer and more sustainable society. This links also with
the previous pledge, because a strong network of local offices is
essential for this, and creating regional super-offices in an attempt
to cut costs will reduce effectiveness and runs against Green
principles of localising services.

3) I pledge to support civil service national pay bargaining and to
press the government to offer pay increases to public sector works
at least in line with inflation.

I am a strong personal believer in national pay bargaining (not least
because, as a local Trade Union negotiator, I know that I could not
deliver year on year the deals for our members that national
bargaining can produce, but also for reasons of equity). I would
expect public sector workers to receive pay increases at least in line
with inflation, but again could not guarantee that this could always
be the case (anyway, it would depend what came out of national
negotiations). But I would pledge to press the government in the
shorter term on this line if elected.

It is unethical and in the long-term counter-productive to expect the
public service to bear the brunt of cuts required by a crisis in the
private financial industry.

4) I pledge to honour the 2005 commitment on public sector pensions and defend the rights of existing members of the civil service compensation scheme.

Public sector pensions are widely seen as gold-lined and over
generous. In reality, most actual public sector pensions are very
low. I would not claim that reform is impossible (I am generally
in favour of a career average earnings calculation rather than final
salary, as it is often more equitable for part-time workers and
women). But reform should be decided in partnership with the pension
members, not by the CBI or well-paid bankers.

I assume that the compensation scheme is the redundancy agreement. This seems to be a very generous scheme and there should be room for negotiation on it, but it should not be discarded merely so that redundancies can be made more cheaply. I would call on both sides to negotiate, and oppose the attempt to tear it up unilaterally.

5) I pledge to campaign to ensure any changes to public services
are only made after proper equality impact assessments have been
conducted and their findings implemented.

I have tried to use equality impact assessments myself in negotiations
on behalf of casualised part-time staff, and agree that any changes
should require equality impact assessments at an early stage. These
should be conducted in partnership with the Trade Unions, and have a
sufficiently wide remit to prevent management getting away with a
'tick box' approach that ignores substantial areas of inequality.

Name: Dan Cooke

Party: UKIP

Contact details:


This candidate as not yet responded please complete the e-action form and ask them to reply to our 5 pledges.

Name: Martin Levy

Party: Communist Party of Great Briatain

Contact details: martinlevey@northerncommunists.org.uk


Here are my responses to your questions about the 5 Pledges:

Pledge 1: Public Services

I fully support. Public services are the hallmark of a civilised society and should be publicly owned and adequately resourced, with staff who are valued, properly remunerated and enjoy decent working conditions. They should not be a source of profit for privateers. Closure of local offices must be opposed as it means reduced accessibility for those who depend on the service. The treatment of the civil service by New Labour has been outrageous, and it is clear that the major parties intend to carry on in the same way after the election. Working people should not have to pay for the crisis created by the bankers and speculators. Instead of cutting public services, the government should be seizing the assets of the super-rich who added to their profits through involvement in the 2008 financial crash. Their speculation, which resulted in so much misery, was nothing less than legalised theft.

Pledge 2: UK tax gap

Again yes. But the tax system needs to be restructured so that wealth is redistributed. In Britain, the richest 5% own 58% of marketable personal wealth (excluding housing), while the poorest 50% own just 1%. 30 years ago, the corresponding figures were 47% and 12% respectively. Closing ‘tax avoidance’ loopholes for the wealthy and corporations would raise at least £70 bn, but there should also be a 1% wealth tax on the richest 10% of the population (raising around £30 bn a year), a ‘Robin Hood’ tax on major transactions (including speculation) by British financial institutions (raising around £30 bn a year) and increased corporation tax on big business profits (raising £10 bn a year). The appointment of properly-remunerated HMRC staff to collect these taxes would involve minimal cost in comparison with the return. Cutting HMRC staff numbers must result in less revenue raised.

Pledge 3: Pay

Again yes. Civil servants are already inadequately paid, and so deserve pay increases at a higher rate than the RPI or CPI. The government has imposed separate bargaining units in the civil service for the sole purpose of weakening workers’ ability to act in concert to defend and improve their pay and conditions. The Tory anti-trade union laws, which New Labour refused to repeal, make it illegal for workers in one bargaining unit to take solidarity action with their colleagues in another. The separate bargaining units also make it easier to privatise sections of the civil service, and thereby further to depress workers’ pay and conditions. It is a scandal that civil servants doing comparable jobs should be on different rates of pay.

Pledge 4: Pensions and the Civil Service Compensation Scheme

Yes, I endorse this pledge too. Civil service pensions are low enough, without their value being reduced further. Those who complain most about public sector pensions – government ministers, Tory MPs, captains of industry, editors of the gutter press – are well provided-for themselves, and don’t have to worry about how they will get by in retirement. It’s another example of the way in which the wealthy are looking after themselves in the current crisis, and expecting working people to take the hit. I salute the campaign by PCS to defend the rights of members under the Civil Service Compensation Scheme – the government’s action is clearly an attempt to clear the ground before announcing mass redundancies of long-serving civil servants.

Pledge 5: Equality impact assessments

Yes, I also support this pledge. I too work in the public sector and know the importance of equality impact assessments when policies and procedures are being changed or developed, and in cases of restructuring and redundancy. Public service employers have in general not got to grips with the legislation, and it is no surprise that government departments are among them. It is a question of fairness: EIAs are not in themselves a panacea, but they can help to limit the degree to which people are unfairly treated in any process because of their age, gender, disability and race – although, ultimately, any redundancy arising out of a restructuring is unfair.

Please do not hesitate to contact me if you need more information.