‘Prime Minister Cameron’s plans to slash public spending will hit the poor and the vulnerable,’ TUC General Secretary Brendan Barber warned yesterday.
Commenting on Cameron’s speech on the coalition government’s plans to cut public spending, Barber warned: ‘If you take tens of billions out of the economy you’ll put hundreds of thousands more people on the dole.’
He added: ‘The Prime Minister says that cuts will affect every single person in our country, but deficit reduction through cuts alone will inevitably hit the poor, the vulnerable and the great mass of middle income Britain who depend on public services.
‘Those at the top will hardly notice.
‘At the same time, he is hinting at a retreat on modest measures to reform capital gains tax that ask the better-off to make some small contribution.
‘It is hard to see any fairness agenda here.’
The general secretary of Britain’s biggest public sector union, Unison, Dave Prentis added: ‘This was a chilling attack on the public sector, public sector workers, the poor, to the sick and the vulnerable and a warning that their way of life will change.
‘There was nothing in this speech that told the rich, the banking and financial sector or the city speculators that their privileged way of life will change.
‘With breathtaking gall, David Cameron is spinning a myth about a hard-done-by private sector.
‘The Tories and their friends in big business seem to forget the tens of billions of pounds of profit made by the private sector out of public sector contracts.
‘And Cameron is trying to fool the public into believing that cutting public spending, quickly and deeply, has nothing to do with political priorities or decisions.
‘I don’t think people will be fooled. It is a complete nonsense to claim that you can cut tens of billions of pounds from public spending and still protect “front-line” services.
‘And throwing public sector workers on the dole does not make sense – that will have a drastic impact on local economies. For every £1 a public sector worker earns, nearly 70p is spent in local shops, cafes, hairdressers and businesses.
‘Of course we have to manage the deficit, but there are other ways of reducing it and that includes making those who caused the crisis pay a bit more, and by tackling tax avoidance and evasion.
‘Cutting deeply and quickly risks plunging the country back into recession – public services are too precious to be turned into a political football.’
Throughout his speech Cameron claimed the cuts will be ‘fair’ and will be made ‘in a way that unites our country rather than divides it’ and that ‘we are all in this together’.
One journalist asked him: ‘Is there not a danger that you will unite the country against you and your government?’
Cameron conceded: ‘This is fraught with danger . . . there are great risks and difficulties in dealing with it (the deficit)’.
However, he warned: ‘We can’t put off difficult department decisions, in big areas of public spending like pay pensions and benefits.’
In his speech he warned of investors’ loss of confidence and high interest rates.
Blaming the Blair/Brown governments for a ‘structural deficit’, he said they were ‘too dependent on a public sector whose productivity was falling and far too hostile to a private sector’.
Cameron added that ‘now we’re all paying the price because the size of the public sector has got way out of step with the size of the private sector.
‘We’re going to have to get it back in line – and that will be much more painful than if we had kept things properly in balance all along.’
