Superannuation Bill

Debate between John McDonnell and Michael McCann

Tuesday 7th September 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr McCann]

I always tend to go with the majority; that is the democratic thing to do. When five out of six trade unions accept a deal, that tells us something. I would have taken the view that the majority position should have won through.

[John McDonnell]

For the sake of accuracy on the record, I should point out that the vast majority of members affected are PCS members; the numbers from the other unions are relatively smaller. Actually, when balloted, 63% of PCS members affected voted against the proposal for the scheme and in favour of industrial action.

[Mr McCann]

My hon. Friend is correct that 70% of those covered by the negotiations were PCS members, but we should bear in mind that 150,000, or 50%, of them would have been protected by the Labour Government’s proposals. It is also dangerous to go down the line of citing figures from ballots because we then tend to look at how many people voted in them.

[John McDonnell]

Just to be accurate for the record, it was one of the highest ballot turnouts that any union has had. The turnout was excellent.

[Mr McCann]

With the greatest respect, I do not think that people should worry about numbers—we need to go to the meat of the debate, which is about protecting low-paid civil servants who would be disproportionately affected by the proposals.

The Minister may feel that the PCS has been foolish. He may feel that he wishes to take advantage of the PCS’s vulnerability at this time and punish it. I genuinely urge him not to do so, because we anticipate a hard time for civil servants, many of whom may be made redundant as a result of the comprehensive spending review, and it would be vindictive in the extreme to hit them with the double whammy of redundancy and then a poor redundancy payment to boot, and to strip them of the hard-won conditions of service that they had.

You will be delighted to hear, Mr Deputy Speaker, that I am now going to sum up. The February 2010 deal was a fair deal, in my view. It saved money, it protected the lowest-paid, and it covered the protection of civil servants’ redundancy payments and early retirement provision. We should not be attempting to punish members of the five trade unions who backed the February 2010 deal, nor should we punish PCS members, even if Ministers believe that the PCS strategy was somehow misplaced. To use the motto of Government Members, if we are all in this together, we should be fair to civil servants. We should put the February 2010 deal back on the table, legislate for those changes, and get the deal done. Then, we can ensure that all public servants who work in the civil service are protected properly.