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Candidate's response - Jim Parker, Scottish Senior Citizens’ Unity Party

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Q1  PCS is campaigning for a national civil service pay framework, which would protect members’ pay from erosion by inflation. Do you support PCS’s campaign against cuts in real pay for public servants?

A1: I do not support PCS’s current campaign on pay.
There are several jobs in the public sector which I think should be paid better; however, I also think that the improvements in these areas can and should be funded by significant job-reductions in other parts of the public sector.

Any organisation (public or private) is more efficient when it is staffed by a minimum of workers paid at maximum rates of pay; and I simply believe that our bloated public sector has become Britain’s last bastion of over-manning.

And of course, we must regard politicians as the main culprits in the field of over-manning; ujustifiably-high rates of pay; and overly-generous pensions.

If (not when) our party comes to a position of influence in government, one of our non-negotiable coalition conditions will be a complete abolition of politicians’ current pension scheme. The ONLY pension they should be entitled to is the state pension system as applicable to all.

Q2  Do you think its possible to offer more effective and responsive public services whilst at the same time cutting public service jobs and funding in critical areas - such as job centres, benefits and pensions offices, tax and business support centres and customs officers?

A2: I don’t feel I am qualified to provide an intelligent and objective answer to this question. When I got your question, I did obtain a copy of the Green Paper; and I have skimmed through it.

However, the sheer amount of work I am trying to get through has made it impossible for me to study the document in sufficient detail for me to honestly say to any meeting that I have adequate knowledge of the subject.

Therefore, I won’t attempt to waste your (or the meeting’s) time by offering a series of vacuous sound-bites and catchphrases.

In his blog, the BBC’s political editor has expressed his hope that the by-election will not be polluted with too much ‘piffle and tosh’. I agree with that; and I think we have already heard more that our fair share from the ‘main parties’ (so-called).

Q3. PCS is concerned that the government has privatised more of the civil service since 1997 than the Conservative government did in 18 years. These privatisations are costly and unnecessary as they are jeopardising services being delivered to the public, often the most vulnerable in society. Where do you stand on privatising public services, in particular the delivery of employment services?

A3: I wholly agree with your assertions. Given the simple facts of human nature, it is not practical, or decent, or even economically-efficient to organise and monitor public services in the same manner as a profit-seeking enterprise; and I think this can be justified by looking no further than the obscene growth of PFI schemes.

We seem to have forgotten that public/private projects were first introduced as a means of commissiong projects which would be generating a revenue stream from DAY1 ( I think the first scheme was some traffic toll system down south; but I stand to be corrected.

However, the whole farrago has now grown to such an extent that the government attempts to hide the amounts of money involved in what some bright whiz-kid in the Treasury refers to as ‘off-balance sheet accounting’.

No matter how they try to dress it up, the solid fact remains: we were leaving a horrendous amount of debt for future generations to repay; and in the meantime, politicians continue to peddle the line that Britain’s debt position is manageable.