Cuts, cuts, cuts

Cuts, cuts, cuts – it is just like the last Tory Government. Many UNISON members were not too impressed with the previous Labour Government but there is no way they would have cut local government funding part way through the financial year causing mayhem in the process. There is no way they would have axed 16 to 19 education, the time students are being prepared for the real world. 65 people in Norfolk Connexions Service providing a front line service to young people now face redundancy. There is no way they would have axed the Building Schools for the Future (BSF) project. The axing of BSF sums up what we face.

Many of us were educated in tatty Victorian schools or if we were lucky schools built in the 1930s, 1950s or 1960s when previous Labour Governments improved school buildings as a priority. Many of these buildings are no longer fit for purpose in a computer dominated world and the cost in renovation and maintenance can be colossal. Much better to knock them down and build schools designed to facilitate education in the 21st century. It also provides jobs for the design and building & construction industries.

To me it seems illogical to sacrifice BSF when our very future depends on the quality of education we provide to our young people. We can find money to fund foreign wars that make the cost of BSF insignificant so I really don’t believe this is about being forced to cut the budget deficit. The Conservative and Liberal Government have opted to cut BSF and other public services ordinary people benefit from in preference to cuts in military spending where the UK outspends most of our European partners. The Government claim BSF bureaucratic and costly yet the National Audit Office says it provided value for money!

This may be what people voted for when they voted Conservative at the last election but it flies in the face of everything the Liberal Democrats have stood for over the last decade (they were the only big political party to oppose the Iraqi war remember). I believe what Liberal Democrat MPs who support the Chancellors proposals are doing makes the expenses scandal seem respectable. UNISON members who are seeing their public services cut need to make their views known to their MPs and support the union nationally and locally in opposing what this Government is trying to do to our society. We have to act now before the Tories say once again “there is no such thing as society”.

People in Greece and Spain are showing their Governments they will not accept swingeing cuts to the public services they value. In the UK the campaign against the poll tax showed people power could deliver, we need to be ready to act again.

- Jonathan Dunning, Branch Secretary.