Public and Commercial Services Union

Contents

• Editorial
• President’s column
• Group secretary’s column

Editorial

Each year, the Editorial Board are given the job of compiling a full Conference report for Oracle, as Ian, our journalist, is kept busy with his camera capturing the sights of Brighton.

For a day and a half, they worked hard recording the contributions made by delegates as motions were debated. With well over a hundred debates taking place this year, covering a huge range of issues, our team certainly had their work cut out for them. We hope that their report, at pages seven to 18 of this edition, gives members a real picture of events as this year’s Conference set out a policy agenda for the newly elected GEC to take forward. With more cuts on the cards, in addition to the 5500 job cuts already planned for 2010/11, life is certainly not going to get any easier in HMRC where we’ve been shrinking since 2004. PCS members know that the ongoing pressure to make savings is damaging the department’s ability to deliver, with frontline services under attack.

Here in HMRC you can’t get much more frontline that the Enquiry Centre network, yet their latest plans directly threaten the remaining local access points. Page five reports on PCS’s campaign against the proposals. As the proposed cuts were announced, HMRC’s inability to assure the public that the reduction in hours would not reduce their access to advice was highlighted by the comments of the Public Accounts Committee Chair, Edward Leigh in response to a National Audit Office report on contact centre performance: ‘If an organisation wants more of its customers to contact it by telephone, then it has got to be good at answering calls. HMRC unfortunately is not very good at answering calls’.

Yet, despite the evidence that Contact Centres are overstretched and under resourced already, HMRC is cracking on with dramatic plans to reduce the local face-to-face access provided by the Enquiry Centre network. Even more customers will be forced onto the phone but HMRC is looking for job cuts from the Contact Centres too. Proof, if any more is needed, that cutting costs takes priority over delivering a service, be it providing advice, answering a letter, collecting a debt or identifying tax evasion – proof that your Union is putting at the heart of it’s campaigning activity in the fight to save jobs and services.

Lorna Merry

Back to top

---

President’s column

The recent budget has only served to reinforce the government’s intent to cut public services with the loss of thousands of jobs over the next year and beyond. It is crucial therefore that PCS continue to highlight the tax justice campaign as an alternative strategy to aid the reduction of the national debt. Our message is that over £120 billion remains outstanding through tax avoided, evaded or uncollected – revenue that could be used to help fund the exchequer which in turn would mean the need for the cuts is eliminated.

Add to that the amount that would be collected via a ‘Robin Hood’ (Tobin) tax where a rate of just 0.5% on sterling currency transactions by banks between countries could raise some £300 billion. This all makes the argument for tax justice instead of public sector cuts even more compelling. Not only that but it would serve to provide aid to the poorest worldwide as a Tobin tax would help bring about global economic stability.

I have been heartened by the support shown by members in demonstrating their opposition to job losses and office closures in HMRC on both 1st and 22nd June – the first taking our case direct to the employer in our demonstration outside Parliament Street and the latter on budget day showing our opposition to the government’s economic policy with protests taking place throughout the UK.

Now we need more than ever to build our own coalition with members in other PCS groups and importantly with other public sector trade unions. The strikes in Greece and Spain have shown a depth of anger as it was the greed of bankers which caused the recession and that ordinary tax-paying workers should not have to pay the price for recovery. That same resistance amongst trade unionists in the UK also needs to be built and PCS will no doubt be in the forefront of such activity.

Finally your newly elected Group Executive Committee (GEC) met for the first time on 8th June. It was particularly pleasing to see some new faces on the GEC especially young members and an increase in representation in equality areas. The structures are now in place for our negotiators to pursue the policies set by the group conference in May. The campaigning work built up over the last couple of years will provide a solid basis to ensure that the protection of your jobs and terms and conditions will remain at the very heart of the GEC’s work over the next twelve months.

Dave Bean

Back to top

---

Group secretary’s column

One hundred PCS members, with their children and families, gathered outside 100 Parliament Street earlier this month to protest against the ongoing job cuts and office closure programme. We thank everybody who took the trouble to come along and enjoy the demonstration – in the rain as well! -which did not go unnoticed by the media, politicians and senior members of the department alike.

We can be sure that attacks on the whole of the public service will be stepped up in the coming months under the direction of the new government. Asking the public to give their view about where the cuts might come from and publishing the cost of services in the name of transparency are of course nothing but gimmicks to justify cutting essential services.

I’m writing this on the eve of the new government’s first Budget. I’m sure we will be able to report that we once again held highly visible demonstrations both at Parliament Street and at local tax offices, and members are thanked in advance for their efforts. Demonstrating, protesting and constantly stating our case for investment in HMRC and all public services are going to be essential if we are going to be able to counter the agenda that dictates that cuts in the public sector are essential. We know that under-investment now – and assigning thousands of public sector workers to the dole queues – is a dangerous and false economy.

PCS says that investment is required, that 20,000 additional staff should be re-employed by HMRC and that local tax offices should be re-opened to maintain a visible tax presence in the communities. We are asking all members, through their branches, to help make the case in their own communities, with their families, friends, mates down the pub, local politicians, councillors or local businesses. The Richard Murphy report, commissioned by PCS, makes all the points for us and needs to receive as wide an airing as possible.

‘We know that cutting staff at a time when tax needs to be collected and re-invested is nonsense, but we won’t win the argument unless we fight’

We know that cutting staff at a time when tax needs to be collected and re-invested is nonsense, but we won’t win the argument unless we fight to counter the sense of fatalism that determines that there is no alternative to cuts. We’ve got a lot of support now for our cause. Tax justice, in all its manifestations, is featuring on the radar of public opinion and media interest like never before, and this interest will become keener as the agenda for cuts really starts to bite when we get into the next comprehensive spending review in the autumn.

Your group executive, in conjunction with the national union, will be making decisions about the extent to which we need to supplement campaigning with industrial action to preserve jobs and maintain services, but we are asking all members to maintain the momentum. Thanks for your support.

Peter Lockhart

Back to top

Please see link above for the full magazine