Brighton council will be discussing their policy on evictions and Bedroom Tax tomorrow at 4pm Hove Town Hall,
and the meeting will be lobbied at 3:30,
https://www.facebook.com/events/635624873130100/
The document that the housing committee will be discussing http://present.brighton-hove.gov.uk/Published/C00000709/M00004056/$$Supp14690dDocPackPublic.pdf
The ConDems have done it ! They have imposed poverty on millions. One million disabled people, 7 million families and 2.5 unemployed people deliberately pushed into poverty by the benefit cap – Benefits Cap
Sign the petition to uprate benefits by rate of inflation
Stop the abolition of Disability Living Allowance
Repeal the Welfare Reform Act 2012
Join the Keep Disability Living Twitterathon on the 23rd Jan
Add friends etc to our cause. Every signature counts. Thank you for your support. x
The Condems laugh as they ruin peoples lives
Not only are an estimated 100 jobs under threat (figures from BBC report), but East Sussex is also facing huge cuts to services for the most vulnerable: children with special needs, disabled people, victims of domestic violence, older people, young people at risk and the homeless will all lose support or vital services.
ESCC have £473,000,000 in reserves as of March 2012. LSTC believes no cuts are necessary and that reserves should be used to fund any shortfall due to the coalition government’s draconian cuts.
THE CUTS in more detail
Adult Social Care: Older People
● Day services ’decommissioned’, with assessed needs and residential services needs to be met from private sector.
● End of Handyperson Grant Scheme, a universal grant for over 65s of up to £200.
● Reduced support for community services and personal care budgets.
Adult Social Care: Working Age Adults
● Community based services to focus on personal care rather than activities of daily living, reducing the range of activities available.
● Reduced support for personal budgets
Universal Services
● Reduction in training for staff
● Strategy and Commissioning staff reductions in 2015/16
● Special Needs Housing Officers to be made redundant
● Housing support for vulnerable older people cut by 15% by 2015/16
● Young Parent Services – loss of 1 of 3 accommodation based services. Loss of night services and on site support for individuals in crisis.
● Young people at Risk – removal of an intensive service for young homeless people or those leaving care
● Supported Accommodation and Independent Living – cut by 15%
● Offenders and complex homeless support – cut pilot scheme by 15%
● Domestic Violence Refuges – cut from 5 to 4
● Mental health and Homeless Services – closure of 1 accommodation based service.
Special Education Needs and Disability
● Reduction of agency foster care, leading to more residential care and closure of respite unit.
● Cut after school clubs and play schemes
Children’s Social Care
● Reduced in house capacity for residential care
Learning and Schools Effectiveness
● Reduced universal service in Childrens Centres
● Reduce Secondary Behaviour Support service
● Reduce Targeted Youth Service (community group work, 1:1, CAMHS and substance misuse)
● Reduce number of qualified teachers in Childrens Centres, and services targeted towards supporting vulnerable young parents.
● Reduce funding for Standards and Learning Effectiveness (SLES) support to schools
● Remove inclusion bursary to support disabled children to access childcare and early years provision.
● Reduce Youth Offending team
● 2.5% increase in charges for traded services
● Removal of transport support for parents of post 16 SEN young people except for nearest school
Transport
● Reduce Road safety education and contribution to Sussex Safer Roads Partnership
Community Services
● Libraries – reduce staffing and book stock budget.
● Arts – removal of Grant Aid Budget to match fund external organisations
Not only are an estimated 100 jobs under threat (figures from BBC report), but East Sussex is also facing huge cuts to services for the most vulnerable: children with special needs, disabled people, victims of domestic violence, older people, young people at risk and the homeless will all lose support or vital services. Lewes Stop the Cuts oppose these cuts and urge you to respond to the consultation which runs until 31st December.
online http://www.eastsussex.gov.uk/yourcouncil/consultation/2012/rppr/rppr.htm
e mail budget.consultation@eastsussex.gov.uk
ESCC have £473,000,000 in reserves as of March 2012. LSTC recommends that in your response to the consultation you say no cuts are necessary and that reserves should be used to fund any shortfall due to the coalition government’s draconian cuts.
THE CUTS in more detail (From http://www.eastsussex.gov.uk/NR/rdonlyres/E442DEFF-EDE6-4AE5-9BAB-EDBB1BEF3594/0/savingsproposals2012.pdf )
Adult Social Care: Older People
● Day services ’decommissioned’, with assessed needs and residential services needs to be met from private sector.
● End of Handyperson Grant Scheme, a universal grant for over 65s of up to £200.
● Reduced support for community services and personal care budgets.
Adult Social Care: Working Age Adults
● Community based services to focus on personal care rather than activities of daily living, reducing the range of activities available.
● Reduced support for personal budgets
Universal Services
● Reduction in training for staff
● Strategy and Commissioning staff reductions in 2015/16
● Special Needs Housing Officers to be made redundant
● Housing support for vulnerable older people cut by 15% by 2015/16
● Young Parent Services – loss of 1 of 3 accommodation based services. Loss of night services and on site support for individuals in crisis.
● Young people at Risk – removal of an intensive service for young homeless people or those leaving care
● Supported Accommodation and Independent Living – cut by 15%
● Offenders and complex homeless support – cut pilot scheme by 15%
● Domestic Violence Refuges – cut from 5 to 4
● Mental health and Homeless Services – closure of 1 accommodation based service.
Special Education Needs and Disability
● Reduction of agency foster care, leading to more residential care and closure of respite unit.
● Cut after school clubs and play schemes
Children’s Social Care
● Reduced in house capacity for residential care
Learning and Schools Effectiveness
● Reduced universal service in Childrens Centres
● Reduce Secondary Behaviour Support service
● Reduce Targeted Youth Service (community group work, 1:1, CAMHS and substance misuse)
● Reduce number of qualified teachers in Childrens Centres, and services targeted towards supporting vulnerable young parents.
● Reduce funding for Standards and Learning Effectiveness (SLES) support to schools
● Remove inclusion bursary to support disabled children to access childcare and early years provision.
● Reduce Youth Offending team
● 2.5% increase in charges for traded services
● Removal of transport support for parents of post 16 SEN young people except for nearest school
Transport
● Reduce Road safety education and contribution to Sussex Safer Roads Partnership
Community Services
● Libraries – reduce staffing and book stock budget.
● Arts – removal of Grant Aid Budget to match fund external organisations
Lewes Stop the Cuts next organising meeting to plan campaigns in 2013 is on Wednesday February 3rd venue to be advised. All welcome. Please join us.
For the next three years benefits will not increase by more than 1 % per year, much below the rate of inflation causing even more hardship and poverty. Osborne says the cap will not apply to DLA.
From April 2013 DLA is abolished. A further 4 billion cut in welfare.
Please sign, share, email, twitter our petitions to help send government a clear message.
Please add members to our cause.
If our petitions reach 100,000 signatures it will force Parliament to debate them. Our DLA petition is now heading towards 18,000 signatures.
Remember – Government austerity kills the vulnerable, sick and disabled NOT the rich !
Thank you for your support.
ONE IN FIVE LEWES HOUSEHOLDS DO.
THIS IS YOUR LAST CHANCE TO PARTICIPATE IN THE CONSULTATION.
From April Lewes District Council will set the rules for council tax benefit in the area instead of the government. Many low paid working people and those under pension age who cannot work rely on council tax benefit to pay their council tax. Here is what the council (along with other councils in East Sussex) proposes to do:
Even if you are destitute you will not get more than £20 per week benefit. These figures show the current weekly rates of council tax for each band.
Band A … £20.09 – £21.61 Band E … £36.83 – £39.63
Band B … £23.43 – £25.22 Band F … £43.52 – £46.83
Band C … £26.78 – £28.82 Band G … £50.22 – £54.04
Band D … £30.13 – £32.42 Band H … £60.26 – £64.84
(Figures vary according to the local parish rate)
So even people living in the most modest housing will lose out. Their benefit will not cover all of the council tax. Things will be worse for families, who need larger housing which tends to be in higher bands. Almost everyone who is unable to work will have to meet some of the council tax out of their own pockets. There though there is nothing in other benefits to allow for this.
Heaven knows how the council will manage to collect the amount of council tax not covered by benefit. Mrs Thatcher lost her job largely because of rage about the community charge (poll tax) and the fact that councils could not collect the amounts of the charge not covered by benefit. Now the coalition government has ensured that it is local council members who will the subject of this rage.
When they work out your benefit,if it is less than £5 per week then they will not pay you. This will mostly affect people o low wages. £5 may not sound a lot, but if you are struggling on the minimum wage it could make working impossible.
Low paid workers already suffer enough. For each extra pound of take home pay their council tax benefit is reduced by 20p. This is on top of a loss of 65p of any housing benefit they get. The government says its wants to make work pay. How does this help.
If you have someone who is living with you who is not legally dependent on you then your benefit will be cut to cover the amount they are supposed to give you. (a non-dependent deduction) This happens even if they do not pay you. This most commonly happens when working age children still live with their parents. The councils want to double the amount that will be taken off benefit in this situation. This is likely to lead to increased homelessness amongst young people, which will cost the council more in the end.
If you have savings of more than £6,000 and you are under pension age you will not get any benefit at all. Tough on those who make provision for a rainy day, but no problem for those who save nothing.
The blame must go to the Coalition government. They have cut the grants that councils use to pay council tax benefit by 10% and said that councils cannot cut benefit to pensioners. This means that councils must savage benefit for working people, cut services, put the council tax up, use its reserves or all of these. Council tax bands stop at a fairly low level, so the super- rich pay little more than the rest of us. Tell your MP what you think of this.
Even the Conservative council in David Cameron’s constituency has agreed not to implement the cuts for a year, but to draw on its reserves. Lewes should do the same this year.
COME TO THE LEWES STOP THE CUTS PUBLIC MEETING ABOUT COUNCIL TAX BENEFIT ON FRIDAY 12TH OCTOBER, 7.30pm AT WESTGATE CHAPEL, HIGH STREET, LEWES (in the bottleneck)
In just 48 hours, HMRC’s consultation on tax-dodging finishes. That means we’ve got just two days to tell them to get serious about closing tax loopholes.
This latest consultation from HMRC could be the start of a turnaround on tax-dodging. But if the government only hears from high profile corporate lobbyists, they could believe the fuss has died down and they can get away with slipping back on tackling the problem.
There’s a real risk that HMRC could recommend a weak law that experts say would only tackle a fraction of tax-dodging. As HMRC read the responses to their consultation, there’ll be a pile a mile high from powerful companies who don’t want to pay their fair share. We need to work together, to tip the balance back in favour of strong rules on tax dodging.
Can you send a quick message to HMRC to say the law they’re looking at doesn’t go far enough
Send Message
Now and again, companies do the right thing and walk away from a tax dodge. Our people-powered campaign forced companies like McDonalds, Coca-Cola and VISA to confirm they’d turn down the tax-dodge on offer to Olympic sponsors.
But we can’t always rely on companies to behave well, when they’ve shown time and again that they often don’t. Instead, we need our politicians to step up and make rules that make tax-dodging impossible. We need a strong anti tax-dodging law that makes sure everyone has to pay their fair share, whether they’re Jimmy Carr or Google.
Can you tell HMRC they need a stronger tax-dodging law? We’ve got just 48 hours to make our voices heard:
Send Message
Sunday 9th September Lobby the TUC for Co-ordinated Strike Action Against Austerity! Organised by National Shop Stewards Network Full Details TBC
Report from Gingerbread on the impact of the Welfare Reform Act on Single parent families
View the report
In September 2010, PCS published the pamphlet ‘There is an alternative: The case against cuts in public spending’. It argued that cuts to public spending would exacerbate the crisis, and outlined alternative ways to close the deficit through investment. We distributed more than 250,000 copies, and tens of thousands of people have read it online.
Since then we have been proved conclusively right – austerity has failed to create jobs or economic growth. As we predicted, the government has attacked jobs, pensions and pay, threatened privatisation and attacked and demonised those entitled to welfare. Yet all of this has worsened rather than improved the economy and people’s lives.
Unemployment is rising, living standards are falling, and in early 2012 official estimates confirmed what our communities have experienced: that the economy is back in recession.
You might wonder why, in the face of such overwhelming evidence of failure, government ministers have not changed course. It is because they want the public sector reduced and privatised, and wages driven down. This is exactly what David Cameron promised, when he said his government would “tear down” what he described as “big government bureaucracy”.
The government has pledged to cut 730,000 public sector jobs by 2017 and to cut spending by £80bn. For millions, their jobs, pay and pensions are under threat, as are the local services they use.
As a union we oppose these policies because of the harm they will cause to our members and because they would make Britain a more brutal place in which to live – with more poverty and inequality, more unemployment, and more misery.
There is an alternative. It’s based on prioritising most people’s need above a few people’s greed.
Mark Serwotka Janice Godrich
General Secretary President
The coalition government argued that Britain’s economic ills were a result of too much public spending. Its remedy was to embark on an unprecedented programme of spending cuts, totalling over £80bn.
Alongside this, the government has offered numerous tax breaks to business; including cuts in corporation tax and the small business rate, reducing employers’ national insurance and creating enterprise zones. It is also planning to slash business regulation and protection for workers to further remove the ‘burdens on business’.
This strategy, the chancellor told us, would bring Britain back from the brink. It has failed quite spectacularly:
The graph shows that UK unemployment grew faster in 2011 than any other major economy, including the Eurozone area. In Canada, Japan and the US unemployment fell in 2011.
The Labour policy of cutting a bit less, a bit slower is no alternative. It is still the wrong policy of austerity, which misunderstands the economic problems we face and how to solve them.
The government’s policies are failing because the public sector is not the problem, and neither is there too much taxation or red tape on businesses.
Instead of solving the crisis, these policies are making it worse:
Because women are more likely to work in the public sector, to use public services, and to receive child benefit and tax credits, the cuts are hitting women disproportionately. Women’s unemployment is the highest it has been since the 1980s.
The government is presenting its plans as simply ‘dealing with the deficit’, but that is a smokescreen for another agenda. The government wants to cut and privatise public services because it believes in a market for even essential goods and services; that business should be free to extract profit from any public service, even schools, hospitals, welfare and prisons.
When Danny Alexander announced his final plans for public sector pensions in December 2011 he said the cuts in pensions would make them “substantially more affordable to alternative providers”. Cutting pensions is part of an ideological crusade to privatise.
The government’s austerity policies are failing. Failing to create jobs, failing to generate economic growth, failing to invest in the infrastructure Britain needs, and failing to protect essential public services.
And they are hitting hardest those who had least to do with causing the crisis.
Austerity isn’t working anywhere
It’s not just in the UK that austerity isn’t working. Greece has been subject to massive austerity, and its economy shrank by 7% in 2011 – leading to rioting in the streets.
In Italy, where the government has also been replaced by unelected bankers, the country has fallen back into recession. In Spain the unemployment rate is now 25%, while youth unemployment is over 50%.
In the UK unemployment rose by 0.5% in 2011 and similarly by 0.4% in the Eurozone as a whole. In the US unemployment fell by 0.8% and in Japan by 0.3% – both these countries have invested in an economic stimulus to revive their economies.
We are the 99% – and why attacking us won’t work
In recent years wages have been falling. Inflation has been higher than the annual increase in pay. This is true in the public and private sectors. This fall in real wages means we are able to buy less with our money than before, as we have less disposable income.
This has an impact on the rest of the economy. If we are able to buy less as consumers then businesses can sell fewer goods and services. In response businesses have three options: they can reduce prices, which will in turn mean squeezing suppliers (driving down wages or cutting jobs); they might cut the number of staff they employ or reduce their wages; or they might no longer sell enough to be profitable on the high street as famous chains like Woolworths and MFI have found in recent years (resulting in mass job cuts).
The graph shows the effect of inflation on your wages (how much worse off you are every year). Proposals for regional or local pay will make this even worse – entrenching lower pay in less well-off areas. In areas that suffered most from the destruction of industry a generation ago, the public sector is often a large part of the economy. Cutting jobs and wages will damage local economies.
It is not just wages that have fallen either. The real value of social security, including unemployment benefit and the basic state pension, has fallen for over 30 years. Pensioner income has also fallen, and will continue to fall, as employers in the public and private sectors seek to cut their pension responsibilities.
Redistribution: to the 1%
Why is this happening and where is the money going? At the same time that wages and other income has been squeezed for the majority of people, a few people at the top are doing better than ever. Average pay for the top directors of Britain’s biggest companies has increased by an eye-watering 49% in the past year alone. A few at the top are getting very rich by cutting pay and pensions for the rest.
While the value of workers’ wages in the UK has fallen, corporate profits have increased as a share of GDP from 13% in the mid-70s to 21% today. In this same period, government has massively cut corporation tax and income tax for the highest earners, so that now the poorest fifth of people pay more in tax, as a proportion of income, than the richest fifth.
Although taxes are lower now on the wealthiest and corporations, these groups are guilty of massive tax evasion and avoidance. The total UK tax gap is estimated to be over £120bn every year. This means that in some companies top directors pay less tax than the cleaners, and some companies with billion-pound UK operations avoid paying tax at all.
In the last 30 years, public transport, electricity, gas, and telecommunications have all been handed over to the private sector. Fares and bills have increased for the many, while big profits have been made for the few. Privatisation does not just change who delivers a service, but gives multinational companies an asset and income stream that was collectively owned and created by us all.
These policies have combined to leave Britain the most unequal it has been since at least the 1930s. Inequality is a cause of this crisis, as well as a growing symptom. The causes of the crisis lie in grinding away people’s income, cutting government tax revenues, privatising public services, and deregulating to allow flagrant profiteering.
This is because the bulk of people – the 99% – have been left worse off, not able to maintain the spending that keeps the retail and service sector of the economy afloat. It also means people have been borrowing more – racking up unsustainable personal and mortgage debts, often just to make ends meet. This means more of people’s income is paying interest payments to banks, instead of supporting jobs in the real economy.
Millions of people are unable to find work, unable to pay their rent or mortgage, and unable to save for their retirement or a rainy day.
The banking sector was the primary cause of this crisis. In the consumer market, it loaned money freely and created a colossal credit bubble. In international markets, it took massive risks, while governments failed to regulate or even understand the complex mechanisms financial institutions used.
The banks were too big to fail, but so too is society. There is an alternative to this misery.
In the UK, the bank bailout means that some banks are publicly owned, while others remain dependent on public guarantees to survive. The finance sector is too big to fail: it holds our money, our savings, our mortgages and even our pensions.
If something is ‘too big to fail’ what does that mean? It means that society cannot function well without it; and therefore in reality the government must guarantee its existence.
This happens more often than we think. When the part-privatisation of the London Underground failed a few years ago, the government stepped in. When the franchise running the east coast mainline rail services failed, again the government stepped in. And when many UK banks looked like failing the government stepped in to bail out some and underwrite the entire system.
This is why the banks never base their head offices in tax havens – because the state there is too feeble to be able to bail them out if anything goes wrong.
Instead they have hundreds of subsidiaries in tax havens to avoid paying the taxes that fund the education, healthcare and transport needs of their workforce.
A banking system that works for people not profit
Some of the banks that were bailed out by the government are still using loopholes to avoid paying tax, and are advising their corporate and wealthy clients how to as well. They are still paying their directors six and seven figure bonuses on top of fat cat wages.
They have also laid-off thousands of their own staff to maintain the greed at the top. It feels like we have nationalised the debts while the profits are privatised.
Another ongoing misdemeanour by the finance sector is commodity speculation. In the case of food this is fuelling inflation, estimated to have added £260 to the average household food bill in the UK, and has left millions across the world facing hunger and starvation.
A financial transactions tax (popularly known as the Robin Hood Tax) would raise revenues to pay back the debt, but is also designed to deter financiers from speculating on markets – which can have highly volatile and disruptive effects on the real economy – and to instead invest in something productive, like new businesses or infrastructure.
This is precisely what we need: investment to create jobs, not to create short-term returns for a wealthy elite. But although a Robin Hood Tax deters speculation the problem with our finance sector is that its sole purpose is to maximise profits.
The banking collapse, which caused such economic damage and required a £1.3 trillion bailout, means the finance sector has lost the right to carry on as before. It must now act in the public interest; publicly owned and controlled.
This would enable government to direct investment into new infrastructure that will create jobs and meet public need: renewable energy, public transport and new affordable housing. These investments may only produce a modest return, but they do produce a return: through energy bills, fares, rents or sales – and additionally because the jobs created will move people off of benefits and into work, paying taxes.
The money, real money, that is held by the finance sector is ours anyway: our pension funds, our savings, and the cash in our current accounts. The rest of it is credit – electronic money (as over 90% now is) created out of thin air by the banks to lend. The banks are given the right to create credit by governments.
We therefore need the government to ensure that when banks create credit, or lend or invest with our savings or pension funds, they are doing so in our collective interest.
That means investing in infrastructure like new council housing for the nearly two million families on council house waiting lists, not lending recklessly and creating a housing bubble (and inevitable crash). It means investing to create new jobs in renewable energy rather than speculating on food prices to profit from starvation. And it means investing in new businesses and ideas, not getting windfall dividends and bonuses for merging existing businesses and laying-off staff.
The UK may not be facing the same grave situation as Greece, but this government is leading us down the same path.
Essential public services are being cut back and privatised, 730,000 public sector jobs are scheduled for the chop – with a knock-on effect in the private sector too – and people’s living standards have been falling for three years now, both for those in work and even more so for those unemployed.
There are social consequences too, which have clear financial costs.
Research from previous recessions shows that the increased financial pressures push more people into depression and substance abuse, means couples are more likely to separate, and suicide rates increase.
Our public services and welfare state are affordable. How can £30bn of welfare and tax credit cuts be necessary when there is £30bn to give back to businesses in tax breaks? If university fees have to be trebled, then why is Trident replacement essential? Why does the government spend huge resources on £1.2bn of benefit fraud, while £120bn of tax is avoided, evaded or uncollected?
Politics is about choices – and there is always a choice and always an alternative. Because there always is an alternative, the devolved administrations in Scotland and Wales have abolished prescription charges and, in Scotland, university tuition fees too.
In Westminster, George Osborne says there is no alternative to austerity.
Labour says the alternative is the same just a bit slower and slightly less severe. They are both wrong.
There is no need for a single job to be cut or a single penny to be taken away from public services. There is an alternative.
It is our job to campaign to change the political consensus which threatens everything our movement has ever fought for.
So whether it’s writing a letter to your MP or local newspaper, going on a demonstration or taking strike action, we all have a duty to campaign to defend jobs, services and the society we live in.
There is an economic crisis – one of rising unemployment, inequality and economic stagnation. Austerity isn’t working, and is not producing the economic growth that the government promised it would. But it is not just growth that matters. If we value people’s lives as more important than simply making more transactions, then the relevant tests for judging an economic recovery are:
These are the tests against which we should measure the government’s economic strategy and proposals.
UCU, PCS and Unite Health will strike against the cuts in their pensions next week on May 10th. Watch this space for more information.
The Sunday Times Rich List, published today and compulsory reading for anybody who wants to understand Britain’s power structure today, holds three extremely significant conclusions. One is that the 1,000 richest persons in the UK have increased their wealth by so much in the last 3 years – £155bn – that they themselves alone could pay off the entire UK budget deficit and still leave themselves with £30bn to spare which should be enough to keep the wolf from the door. The second, even more staggering, is that whilst the rest of the country is being crippled by the biggest public expenditure and benefits squeeze for a century, these 1,000 persons, containing many of the bankers and hedge fund and private equity operators who caused the financial crash in the first place, have not been made subject to any tax payback whatever commensurate to their gains. This is truly a government of the rich, by the rich, and for the rich.
The third is that despite the biggest slump for nearly a century, the slowest and most anaemic recovery, and prolonged austerity stretching to a decade or more, this ultra-rich clique are now sitting on wealth even greater than what they had amassed at the height of the boom just before the crash. Their combined wealth is now estimated at more than £414bn, equivalent to more than a third of Britain’s entire GDP. They include 77 billionaires and 23 others whose wealth exceeds £750m.
Despite these massive repositories of wealth, these are some of the very people to whom Osborne gifted £3bn in his recent budget by cutting the 50p tax rate. That measure alone gave 40,000 UK millionaires an extra average £14,000 a week, at the same time as those on very low incomes in receipt of working tax credits who couldn’t find an employer to increase their hours of work from 16 to 24 a week were being deprived in the same budget of £77 a week, around a third of their income, through their tax credits being withdrawn.
In 1997 the wealth of the richest 1,000 amounted to £99bn. The increase in their wealth over the last 15 years has therefore been £315bn. If this increase in wealth were subject to capital gains tax at the current 28% rate, it would yield £88bn, and that alone would pay off more than 70% of the total budget deficit. However Osborne seems to share the notorious view of the New York heiress, Leonora Helmsley: “taxes are only for the little people”.
With the health bill passed, the government is now setting about forcing
the market into the NHS. Colin Leys looks at what is likely to happen next
Andrew Lansley and the Tories continue to claim that under their plans
to privatise the NHS ‘services will still be free at the point of use’.
But this is seriously misleading. They fail to add a key proviso –
provided the service is still available on the NHS. In reality, a
growing list of services will not be available, and so won’t be free.
This is already happening. People who suffer from a range of conditions
that are not life-threatening, but are often painful and even disabling,
are being told to pay for treatment or go without. The health bill will
make this more common, and taking out private insurance for such
problems will become widespread.
At the same time the government plans to expand the use of personal
health budgets, administered for us by ‘intermediaries’. Coupled with
the normalisation of private health insurance, personal health budgets
could easily become a tax-funded subsidy for private healthcare for the
better-off, triggering a further contraction of free NHS care for the
poor. New charges or ‘co‑payments’ also look likely for some aspects of
NHS care.
It has become urgent to see how this chain of developments is likely to
evolve.
Under the bill, clinical commissioning groups, or CCGs, which are
unelected and unaccountable, only need arrange for the provision of
hospital or community healthcare services that they consider necessary
to meet patients’ ‘reasonable requirements’. There will be limits to
their power to restrict coverage, but since the justification for
introducing CCGs is supposed to be that GPs ‘know what patients need’, a
good deal of discretion is going to be left to them. And the private
sector ‘support organisations’ that are going to do most of the actual
work of commissioning will urge that the list of treatments the CCG will
pay for should be kept as short as possible, both to save money and
because their personnel will tend to favour private provision.
Services are already being withdrawn
It is already happening, in a semi-secret way. The practice began in
2006 when a primary care trust in Croydon, desperate to save money, put
together a list of 34 procedures it considered ‘not necessarily
performed for medical reasons’, which it said did not have to be offered
to patients in cases where they were ‘ineffective’ or cosmetic. The list
included non-cosmetic procedures, including surgery for cataracts, hips
and knees, on the grounds that the benefits were minimal in ‘mild’ cases.
Obviously, what is considered a ‘mild’ case of a cataract or an
arthritic hip or knee is liable to be modified by financial pressures
and by April 2011 the Croydon list was being widely used to save money.
According to one well-informed commentator at the time, in some areas
only “urgent” treatments – cancer, fractures and A&E – were funded. All
other procedures were either delayed or the patient was denied funding.
So the ‘postcode lottery’ that used to apply to some prescription drugs
now applies to some treatments, or even whole medical conditions, such
as varicose veins or disfiguring skin conditions. Some of the conditions
listed may sound unimportant, but to a person who suffers from them
denial of treatment is far from trivial.
Besides these services there are others that are supposed to be
available but are increasingly being denied in practice. Some GPs have
been restricted to making four referrals per week, regardless of how
many patients in need of a referral they may see. Other GP referrals are
intercepted and denied before they reach a hospital specialist. This is
being done, explicitly to save money, by privately-run ‘referral
gateways’. One of the first was in west London, where the giant US
health insurer UnitedHealth has been given the job of vetting, and in
some cases overturning, GPs’ judgements.
One west London patient, who had been referred for a replacement after
her knee collapsed, was told by the referral gateway to have
physiotherapy and painkillers instead. It took more than £1,000 worth of
private x-rays and surgeons’ opinions for her to finally prove that she
needed a knee replacement and get it done on the NHS. Many patients are
less fortunate, or determined. For them, NHS treatment is not free. They
must pay to get it privately, if they can. If not, they don’t get treated.
As a result of the health bill, it may not just be GPs’ referrals that
are diverted or denied. The more expensive treatments recommended by
hospital specialists, which the CCGs are going to have to pay for, could
also come under review, and the CCGs could refuse to pay – just like
healthcare maintenance organisations in the US. (Remember the doctor in
Michael Moore’s film Sicko explaining to Congress how she was paid a
bonus related to how many treatments she denied?)
Personal health budgets
Another major change already taking place, and which may have crucial
consequences as a result of the health bill, is the rolling out of
personal health budgets. At the moment these are to be allocated to some
53,000 people in England who are receiving NHS continuing care for a
chronic condition. The personal budgets already used in social care have
revealed their inherent problem: they are limited – and financial
constraints mean that they are not generous. If a personal budget proves
inadequate, the patient has to top it up – if they can afford to. For
NHS care, such ‘top-ups’ will be payments for what was previously free.
It is significant that the government describes patients in receipt of
continuing care as the ‘first group’ to be eligible for them, implying
that personal budgets will be extended to other sorts of patient. The
NHS Future Forum, set up by the government in April 2011, went further,
recommending that, ‘Within five years all those patients who would
benefit from a personal health budget should be offered one.’ The
government accepted the forum’s report, and the Department of Health’s
impact assessment for commissioning speaks of every patient having a
budget allocation.
This raises the possibility that personal health budgets, with
personally-paid top-ups, will become the basis of most, or conceivably
all, NHS care. This approach is strongly backed by advocates of health
insurance. They propose that everyone should have a personal health
budget, sometimes called a ‘health protection premium’, paid for by the
state, equivalent to the NHS’s average annual spending on healthcare per
person. This would entitle everyone to a defined package of
entitlements. Anything beyond that would have to be paid for by the
individual. For most people that would mean taking out medical insurance
for a wide range of other conditions and treatments – if they could
afford to, and if insurance was available (pre-existing conditions may
not be insurable).
Since 2010–11 the funds distributed by the Department of Health for
spending on patients’ acute (hospital) care have been calculated on the
basis of the actual health status of every single patient registered
with a GP, as reported annually to the department – in just the same way
that insurance companies assess whether to offer someone insurance, and
if so for what level of premium. This makes a wholesale shift to private
healthcare via personal health budgets even easier to manage, especially
since insurance companies are going to be involved in the commissioning
support groups that will be handling all such data.
The normalisation of private health insurance
To see how this could work, we must start by noting that in 2009, 10 per
cent of the UK population already had some form of private medical
insurance. This proportion had been more or less static for several
years. Greatly increased NHS funding from 2002 onwards had led to a big
drop in waiting times and other improvements, which reduced the main
incentive to ‘go private’; and then the 2008 financial crisis cut
people’s spending power, leading to a small decline in the numbers
privately insured.
The insurance industry is confident that there will eventually be a big
increase in demand as a result of the health bill. The targets of the
costly advertising campaigns recently mounted by health insurance
companies are not the rich but people in ordinary jobs. The companies
clearly expect private health insurance to become widespread and normal.
This could then easily mesh with personal health budgets to produce a
state-subsidised private health insurance system. It would work as
follows. Personal health budgets will usually be held and administered
by ‘intermediaries’, as they mostly are in social care, and the
intermediaries could be insurance companies. Patients with NHS personal
budgets held and managed by these companies could then have full private
health insurance, with much of their premiums covered by their personal
health budgets. They would only have to pay the difference.
This would leave CCGs with the uninsurable patients – those with costly
chronic illnesses, and those too poor to pay any premiums. And since the
CCGs would no longer have the unspent personal health budgets of the
healthier and wealthier patients, who would have been cherry-picked by
the insurers, the result would be further restrictions on care for those
who remained.
The government will also be under pressure from private providers and
the Treasury to allow charges or ‘co-payments’ for some aspects of the
NHS care that would still be available free. These would probably begin
with charges for consulting a GP and for the so-called ‘hotel costs’
involved in being in hospital, both of which have long been urged by the
advocates of privatisation. If and when this happens, the principle of a
comprehensive, universal free service will have been comprehensively
abandoned.
Colin Leys is an honorary professor at Goldsmiths University of London.
He is the author of Market Driven Politics: Neoliberal Democracy and the
Public Interest and, with Stewart Player, The Plot Against the NHS
(Merlin Press, 2011).
Sadly once again Brighton is being subjected to a march involving the racist EDL on Sunday.
Sunday 22nd April Oppose the EDL March For England 11am
Info
Make a stand against racism and fascism: Oppose the March for England
We, as Brighton and Hove residents, are calling on all communities to oppose the spread of racist and fascist ideas under the banner of ‘March for England.’ Harangue, mock and disrupt the march. Line the route.
Gather in groups along Queen’s Road, from Brighton station to the Clocktower at 11am. Together we will drown out their message of hate.
Pensions
As part of the on-going battle to stop the government’s public sector pensions robbery PCS are organising lobbies of key MPs in the coalition. This Saturday 21st April a group are travelling up to Horsham to pensions axe-man Francis Maude constituency.
PCS are very keen to encourage delegations from all unions involved in the battle to join them and bring a branch banner. A coach is going from Brighton at 9:15am via Worthing to Horsham. The coach leaves 9.15am St Peters Church, York Place, Brighton. You are welcome to just turn up but if you can let Kev Dale know in advance how many seats you need email kev.dale10@gmail.com
Assemble for march:
11am MALET STREET, WC1E 7HY
nr. Goodge Street, Tottenham Court Road,
Russell Square, Holborn, Euston.
Bike rack facility close by.
Followed by MARCH TO WESTMINSTER
Our NHS will be privatized if the Health and Social Care bill goes
through. This means that instead of the NHS providing high quality
health care for free on the basis of need – services will soon be given only to those who can afford them. We must stop this bill from passing and protect our free health care. We are calling for people to come out and stand up against this bill – to show the government that we will not allow them to privatize this great national service. Join us outside the department of health in Whitehall on March the 17th and
flood the streets with the sheer amount of people who care about free
healthcare.
An enormous number of private health companies, not to mention
accountancy firms and think-tanks, have been involved in drafting and
lobbying for the Health and Social Care Bill and other legislation
leading to the privatisation of the NHS.
At the end of the NHS demonstration on Saturday, we are calling on
people to take action against private health companies who will
unsurprisingly benefit from the NHS bill.
As the demonstration comes to an end, please look the for signals (they
will instantly come clear) and together, visit a target.
The government is trying to push its controversial Health and Social
Care Bill through the House of Lords on Monday 19th March. This could
be the final Parliamentary chance to affect the outcome of this
dangerous Bill, which threatens to break up and sell off parts of our
health service.It’s even more worrying that the Government is trying to
get the ink on the paper before anyone finds out what’s in the Bill’s
Risk Register – the internal government document that sets out the
risks from any new set of reforms.
Campaigners have been trying to get this document made public for a
long time. The Government, having been ordered to release it by the
Information Commissioner in response to a freedom of information
request, appealed against this decision and lost the appeal. But they
still haven’t released the Risk Register.
Risk Registers are not normally released to the public, but the
tribunal took this unusual step as they felt the particular risks in
the document were of a nature that made this case different from
earlier instances. We need to know what’s in that document before
parliamentarians take the final votes on whether the Bill is made law.
Please help Lord Owen to garner support for this important
amendment by writing to a member of the House of Lords, asking them to
lend their support.
Saturday 17th March 3:30pm outside Conservative Party Office Church
Road Hove (Just by Hove Town Hall)
The next steering group meeting is on3rd April 2012 at Sheila’s House. If anyone need the address email s.cullen@brighton.ac.uk
Wednesday 7 March – under the banner of the All Together for the NHS campaign – nurses, midwives, doctors, physiotherapists, managers, paramedics, radiographers, cleaners, porters and other employees from across the health service will join with patients to fill Central Hall Westminster for a 6pm ‘Save our NHS’ rally.
‘Music is a moral law. It gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind, and life to everything. . . . Without music, life would be an error.’ Plato
The East Sussex Music service provides a wide range of music and vocal tuition services:
The National Plan for music plans to cuts funding to East Sussex Music Service by 52% by 2015
| East Sussex Area Music Allocation | |||
| 2011/2012 | 2012/2013 | 2013/2014 | 2014/2015 |
| £1,027,440 | £924,696.00 | £739,756.80 | £500,072.10 |
| 10% cut | 20% cut | 32% Cut | |
This funding is not guaranteed to go to the East Sussex Music Service.
The National plan for music requires the setting up of Music Education Hubs which must apply to the arts council for funding. These hubs will be led by a key partner, in most cases, probably a Music Service, and their remit is to be the centre of music provision in local authority areas. However, the hubs, the Arts Council of England tells us, will be fewer in number than the current Music Services, because some may take in two Local Authorities, according to conditions in different areas.
The National Music Plan States:
“We anticipate that many of the applicants to be hub leaders will be local authorities / local authority music services, or include them within a formal partnership, although we expect a
Defend the East Sussex Music Service From 52% cuts by 2015!
‘Music is a moral law. It gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind, and life to everything. . . . Without music, life would be an error.’ Plato
The East Sussex Music service provides a wide range of music and vocal tuition services:
The National Plan for music plans to cuts funding to East Sussex Music Service by 52% by 2015
| East Sussex Area Music Allocation | |||
| 2011/2012 | 2012/2013 | 2013/2014 | 2014/2015 |
| £1,027,440 | £924,696.00 | £739,756.80 | £500,072.10 |
| 10% cut | 20% cut | 32% Cut | |
This funding is not guaranteed to go to the East Sussex Music Service.
The National plan for music requires the setting up of Music Education Hubs which must apply to the arts council for funding. These hubs will be led by a key partner, in most cases, probably a Music Service, and their remit is to be the centre of music provision in local authority areas. However, the hubs, the Arts Council of England tells us, will be fewer in number than the current Music Services, because some may take in two Local Authorities, according to conditions in different areas.
The National Music Plan States:
“We anticipate that many of the applicants to be hub leaders will be local authorities / local authority music services, or include them within a formal partnership, although we expect a range of organisations to come forward. The Arts Council will welcome applications from organisations including local authorities; national, regional or local music/arts organisations; social enterprises; commercial bodies or chains of schools – or some combination of bodies working in formal partnership / joint venture with one another to deliver the lead hub role.”
We believe that an ‘outstanding’ (2008, 2009, 2010) Music and Arts Service, such as we have in Lewes, is already providing an excellent service and is an integral part of a comprehensive education for all children in our city. We urge the government to reverse this proposed cut that will directly impact on children and young people across the area.
What can we do about this?
Contact Details for Norman Baker
23 East Street, Lewes, BN7 2LJ
Tel: 01273 480281
Fax: 01273 480287
normanbaker@cix.co.uk
http://www.normanbaker.org.uk/contact_form.htm
Council budget proposals reveal an axe is hanging over children’s centres, libraries and care for the elderly and disabled.
Wednesday 11th Jan Lewes Stop the cuts Steering Group Meeting 8pm The Black Horse (back room)
Wednesday 11th Jan Brighton Trades Council 8pm King and Queen
Monday 16th Jan Lewes Trades Council, 8pm, Cliffe Legion HQ, Morris Road
Thursday 12th Jan Brighton Benefits Campaign Meeting 6pm Duke Of Wellington Upper Gloucester Rd
Saturday 14th Jan Save the Music Service Big Children’s Busk! 2pm Churchill Square
Friday 20th Jan Stop Nadine Dorries Abstinence Bill Protest 10:30am Old Palace Yard, Parliament
Thursday 26th Jan Lobby of Council Meeting against Cuts and in support of Save the Music Service Campaign. 4pm Hove Town Hall
Monday 30th Jan Pro-Choice Public Meeting 6pm Cowley Club (in response to anti-abortion demos outside Brighton clinic)
Thursday 2nd Feb Stop the Cuts Public Meeting. How can We Defend Council Services in Brighton? Debate with Green Party and Stop the Cuts 7:30pm Friends Meeting House
Monday 13th February Brighton Trades Council AGM. Mark Serwotka PCS General Secretary Guest Speaker. Venue TBC
Thursday 23rd Feb Council Budget Meeting Lobby. 4pm Brighton Town Hall
Tuesday 11th October Higher Education Stop the Cuts Meeting details TBC
Thursday 13th October Stop the Cuts Public Meeting ‘Defend Jobs and Pensions’ with speakers from
Southampton Unison dispute and unions balloting on pensions
Click on the link below to let us know what you think
Lewes Stop the cuts online poll.
November 9th Demonstration
Major London demonstration against the Government’s higher education white paper.
We’re very concerned about the government’s plans to ‘open up’ public services to the private sector, and probably you are too. You might have seen this website where the government is asking people to comment on the plans outlined in its white paper http://www.openpublicservices.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/
You can help raise concerns about the proposed changes to the NHS by writing to a member of the House of Lords. They aren't as used to individual lobbying as MPs, so receiving personal contacts from members of the public should really get their attention. Of course, one of the reasons they don't get much contact is that they don't have a direct group of constituents. We can help get around this, using this tool to adopt a Peer. We'll match you at random to a member of the House of Lords and help you to contact them, either directly with a posted letter, or by email. Click on this link to be assigned a peer:
Withdraw NHS Reform Bill – e-petitions
Petition text below:
Responsible department: Department of Health
The Secretary of State should keep the duty to “secure and provide comprehensive health care for all”. GP commissioning consortiums-clusters will introduce charges, insurance fees, and contract commercial companies. These reforms are based on the privatised U.S. system: the most expensive and highly inequitable healthcare system. The existing NHS is almost the least costly healthcare system, with one of the best levels of access to care. (US Commonwealth Fund 2010 survey of 11 industrialised countries). The NHS should remain a Public Service. Competition law should not apply to the NHS: healthcare is a collective public good. People created NHS free health care for all,in 1948. to replace private medicine only for those who could pay. Britain was then officially bankrupt. Scotland and Wales have retained publicly funded NHS and improved them. Proposals by RCN and BMA members would save money and improve care, without drastic cuts or privatisation.
In a few days parliament is due to hear the NHS white paper, which is a huge step towards the break up and privatisation of our public health service. More on the white paper here http://www.keepournhspublic.com
We are asking people to join Keep Our NHS Public and Stop the Cuts to break into groups around town on Sunday the 4th, talking to people about what this means and asking them to sign a petition and get involved in the campaign to save the NHS. If we can get just 100 people we can be on over 30 places round town, which will have a good impact, get in the press and help expose the government’s plans.
In just a few days, Norman Baker has to vote on massive changes to our NHS. 38 Degrees has produced thorough, independent legal advice about what these changes really mean.
Our expert legal advice is sobering. Despite the “listening exercise”, the government’s changes to the NHS plans could still pave the way for a shift towards a US-style health system, where private companies profit at the expense of patient care.
Norman Baker claims the NHS is safe. If he reads the evidence he will know he can’t hide behind that spin. Together, we can put Norman Baker under massive pressure to vote to save our NHS.
Click on the link to send this legal advice to Norman Baker and make him realise he has to respond:
https://secure.38degrees.org.uk/email-your-lib-dem-mp
Our independent lawyers identified two major problems in the new legislation:
MPs vote in just seven days. Seven days to not only get the evidence, but be convinced there’s way too much public concern to ignore it. The good news is, with over 800,000 of us now armed with expert legal advice, we are just the people to speak up. Our message is clear: we have the facts, so politicians can’t hide behind spin. Let’s give MPs from all parties the mandate they need to think again and vote against these changes to the NHS.
https://secure.38degrees.org.uk/email-your-lib-dem-mp
Barrister Rebecca Haynes found that the government’s plans could pave the way for private healthcare companies and their lawyers to benefit most from changes, not patients. Another barrister, Stephen Cragg, found that we were right to be worried that Andrew Lansley was planning to remove his duty to provide our NHS.
This is the conclusion of a top legal team paid to have no other interest at heart but yours.
Click here to sign
http://nhs.unitetheunion.org/page/s/gp-signup-form
This pamphlett makes facinating reading, explaining the how the Welfare state has been erroded over the past 30 years. Use the arguments in here to explain the benefits of the welfare state and to stop the cruelty the planned cuts in the Welfare budget. These cuts affect real people with real problems – anybody could suddenly find themselves disabled – fight back now before they come for you!!
A couple of facts from the pamphlett:
75% of disabled women and 70% of disabled men are already at the bottom end of Britain’s income distribution scale living in poverty.
In 2010 £16 billion in benefits and tax credits were unclaimed. Only £5 billion is lost through the combined effects of error and fraud.
we are meeting this morning at 1030 in Cliffe High St. opposite the Harvey’s brewery shop. Brighton Benefits Campaign are coming to join us too.
Our first anti workfare event last month at which we handed out leaflets outside Supedrug and Argos provoked a lot of positive comments from shoppers in the precinct. We asked Argos and Superdrug customers not necessarily to boycott businesses but to ask them to pay a fair day’s pay for a fair days work. The worker is definitely worthy of his hire. Why should we not have the pay packet experience along with ‘work experience’ as they put it. Companies such as Argos and Superdrug make huge profits and can well afford to pay a living wage, let alone the national minimum wage, to their workers. Charities such as Age Uk, the British Heart Foundation and the Salvation Army should be ashamed of themselves participating.
We oppose workfare on principle.
A Fair Days Pay For a Fair Days Work!
11.0am Start of Demonstration: in front of Royal Sussex County Hospital- bring banners, placards, whistles etc.
11.30 March from Eastern Rd to Victoria Gardens12.30 Rally with speakers introduced by Gary Palmer (GMB), i
ncluding Caroline Lucas, Paul Maloney (GMB Regional Secretary), Marc Steel (comedian), Unison health workers,
GMB health workers, Ann-Marie WatersLewisham KONHSP), Steve Bassam.
|
Wednesday 20th March
We invite you to attend a lobby outside County Hall tomorrow in protest at the £60.62 m cuts
that East Sussex County Council will be agreeing.
We will be there between 9am and 9:45 and then some of us will attend the meeting, which starts at 10am
Please forward this on if you can. We have also created a facebook event, so you can invite people that way too.
What do the proposed cuts actually mean for East Sussex residents? (longer list of cuts attached)
It is easy to reduce the cuts to a whole raft of figures, but in just one of the many documents the council have been presented with,
we find this, from the Adult Social Care & Community Safety RPPR Board about just one of the cuts to community
based services for older people (Adult Social care will bear a huge £27.8m of the cuts)
of individual care packages, will inevitably have an impact on clients’ quality of life;
impact on issues such as mental health (and associated costs).
delivery will be dependent on reviews of many individual care packages; and
Noted the need for close monitoring of progress towards delivery, both in terms of
savings and the impact on clients.
This gives a very small idea of the potential actual impact on individual lives, and how short sighted these ‘savings’
may prove to be financially, let alone the much more important human costs of quality of life, social isolation
and mental health.
There will also be a predicted 100 job losses.
LSTC say these cuts are not necessary. The council has had it’s budget slashed by central government, but they
must bear some responsibility for doing the government’s dirty work for them. The council have £473m in reserves
and are spending £44m on a controversial road scheme in the county.
Nationally £120bn of tax is avoided, evaded or uncollected. There is an alternative, and it’s time that the most vulnerable in our society were protected rather than constantly attacked.
Please join us in saying NO to these CUTS. Thank you
LSTC
