Superannuation Bill

Jack Dromey Excerpts

Tuesday 7th September 2010 Commons Chamber

[Jack Dromey (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)]

May I declare an interest? For 15 years I was chairman of the Ministry of Defence joint industrial Whitley council, which at its height covered 120,000 industrial civil servants. It was the only body in British industrial relations that survived the 18 years of a Conservative Government with a Minister in the chair, such was the emphasis on good industrial relations in a very sensitive Department. I know from my own experience that the armed forces value greatly the outstanding service given by defence civilians in the Army, Air Force and Navy. A colonel in charge of one of the biggest army bases in Europe once said to me, “Jack, we pay them poorly, but at least they can look forward to a decent pension and, if they lose their job, a good redundancy payment.” That historic assumption is now being torn up.

Who are the civil servants about whom we are talking? Reference has been made to those who work in customs, in the UK Border Agency, in the issuing of driving licences and in air traffic control, and I will give two additional examples. First, only two weeks ago I was in the Jobcentre Plus office in Erdington High street, which covers the area with the highest unemployment in Birmingham but is the highest performer. There were excellent young men and women there working with a passion to help the most underprivileged in a deprived community back into work. The other example is people I know very well from my own experience, the defence civilians at RAF St Athan who, right now, are working hard to support our troops in Afghanistan. They are typical of those who have historically worked in the Ministry of Defence—loyal, long-serving employees, many of them ex-service personnel.

There are 35,000 civil servants in the west midlands, and I want to dispel the myth that they are well paid and have gold-plated pensions and secure jobs. They are mostly low-paid people whose wages have fallen behind inflation. Their average pension is £4,200 a year, and 100,000 civil servants have lost their jobs. Can we have a debate based upon the facts, not the myths?

On the myth that civil servants are well paid, 40% earn less than £20,000 a year and 63% earn less than £25,000 a year. In the Department for Work and Pensions, the lowest-paid get but £13,000 a year. Yes, there was the IT director on £249,000 a year, and that was absolutely wrong, but can we stop using the exception to have a go at civil servants as a whole? On the myth that civil servants enjoy gold-plated pensions, I have already said that if we exclude the highest-paid, the average pension is £4,200 a year, and 100,000 retired civil servants have a pension of less than £2,000 a year. On the myth that they are in secure employment, 20,000 jobs have gone in HMRC, 30,000 in the DWP and 25,000 in the Ministry of Defence, and many more now face losing their jobs, particularly as we look towards the comprehensive spending review.

Reform the current arrangements? Yes. Negotiation to that end? Without hesitation. But it is fundamentally wrong, and a very dangerous precedent, for Government to impose unilaterally on any group of employees changes that are detrimental to their terms and conditions of employment. It is wrong to compare what is now on offer with what was on offer from the Labour Government. Somebody on the median salary of £22,500 a year who has been employed for 20 years and is made compulsorily redundant will suffer a cut of £37,500 in what they would otherwise have expected. That is a broken promise to people who had accrued rights on which they depended, which the Bill is taking away from them at a stroke.

It is wrong that there is no protection in the Bill for the lowest-paid. I heard the Minister’s Delphic statements earlier about his hope and expectation, but there is nothing to support them in the Bill. It is wrong and bizarre that somebody who is made compulsorily redundant will now receive less compensation. I know, from my years negotiating in the industrial civil service, about what used to be called public interest terms, which were associated precisely with compulsory redundancy. The Minister said earlier that he knew of no other such examples, but it is common in the private sector that there are enhanced terms for redundancy but yet further enhanced terms for compulsory redundancy.

It is also wrong that, without negotiation or pre-legislative scrutiny, the vehicle of a money Bill is being used in this way, and it is a dangerous precedent. If yesterday we saw a constitutional outrage—a gerrymander—today we see a contractual outrage, the unilateral dashing of the hopes and expectations of hundreds of thousands of civil servants.

I return in conclusion to RAF St Athan, because the workers there working day and night in support of our armed forces in Afghanistan are themselves facing redundancy. I know many of the individuals concerned, and they are trying to plan their future. Now, at a stroke, what they had hoped for will be taken from them in this Bill. They are not responsible for the misdeeds of bankers, and they resent the peddling of myths about civil servants, as they will resent, in the words that the Minister used today, the use of a “blunt instrument” against good men and women who have served this country well and deserve dignity and respect, but who are being treated with contempt.