Tuesday 9th October 2012
CONSERVATIVE PARTY CONFERENCE, BIRMINGHAM
SPEECH BY THE RT HON DR LIAM FOX MP TO THE TRADE UNION REFORM CAMPAIGN (TURC) FRINGE EVENT,
We're all in it together -- except the unions
[as delivered]
For us, today, we will have to give voters some bad news. In an era of belt tightening not everyone is feeling the pinch.
In an era of public spending cutbacks not all of the public sector is making its fair share of cuts.
In an era of austerity there are those who regard themselves as too important to make a contribution.
And I refer, of course, not to the much maligned bankers, or to the mansion owners - so offensive to the Lib Dems - but to one of the most protected groups in our society, who are the trade unions.
Let me give you a specific example. Eric referred to what we got when we returned to office. At the Ministry of Defence in our first year of government, 2010-2011, we had to make some very difficult and painful decisions because of the financial catastrophe left behind by Labour - both in the Department and in the country more generally. Allowances were reviewed, spending programs cut back and both military and civilian numbers were sadly reduced.
Yet in the same year, in this one department, 423 civil servants carried out what they called ""trade union responsibilities"" at a cost to the taxpayer, and the MoD budget, of £3.9 million. This is an absolute disgrace. That money could have been spent on improving service accommodation or allowances or manpower. It was instead spent on trade union officials who – and wait for this - unbelievably have the right to e-mail every single person involved in the MoD. My own Special Advisers and my own Private Office were receiving e-mails from the unions telling us how wicked our own policies were and why they should be resisted.
How widely was this experience replicated across government and what is this costing across the whole of Government today?
The picture may actually be worse than appears at face value since the Facility Time allocations - the delightfully obtuse name for official trade union activities -- is based on full departmental headcounts not the union membership within a department. For example, the PCS website claims that there are “more than 55,000 members” within Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs (HM RC). Yet, elsewhere on their website they explain that the HM RC Facility Time allocation for the current year is being based on the departmental headcount of 75,456. In other words, they base their calculations for their union time – and ultimately public remuneration - on a 40% exaggeration of the actual number of members they actually serve.
The situation is intolerable and it must be changed. Why, I ask you, should anyone in the public sector get paid time off for union activities at all? The trade unions are not poor. They are perfectly capable of building up a £100 million war chest for strike funds or giving £10 million a year to the Labour Party to prevent it going bankrupt. Why is it that they alone should continue to receive free offices from which to conduct their business with the rent paid for by the taxpayer? Why should their union subs be deducted by payroll at source, again paid for by the taxpayer and at no cost to the unions themselves? Why is it, when everyone else is making sacrifices, that they should regard themselves as untouchable?
This week, the government announcement, with Francis Maude, made some very welcomed reforms to the unions. It is a useful start -- but is it enough? For the reforms being set out refer to central government alone. Wouldn't it be right and proper to extend these reforms to the whole of the public sector -- to local government, as Eric said; to the National Health Service; to schools and all other services?
Why should those who are struggling to make budgets stretch be asked to carry the additional burden of the union activists who should be paying for themselves? And just who, we may ask ourselves, is carrying out the necessary employment activity while they are engaged in their political activism? If the answer is that their job is being done by someone else it is legitimate to question whether they are required there at all in the first place.
I congratulate TURC for getting this issue onto the public agenda. When we are asking the public to cut back for the sake of our national finances it is outrageous to have backdoor funding for the Labour Party -- the ones who got us into this economic mess -- at the expense of hard-pressed taxpayers. When Parliament returns we shall be looking for ways to ensure that this utterly unacceptable situation is brought to an end. We will look for legislative opportunities to ensure that the sort of abuses I have just outlined are stopped, not just in Whitehall, but across our public services as a whole.
The trade unions have a perfect right to carry out their activities on behalf of their members but the cost should be carried by their members not by the general public. What we seek is fair and reasonable and overdue. We will no doubt face – let’s make no bones about it - the full spite and wrath of their political activists just as we did in the 1980s. It must not stop our resolve on behalf of those who currently foot the bill.
I hope we will have your full support in that project.