A union leader has criticised the political parties for unquestioningly opting for public service cuts.

Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS) general secretary Mark Serwotka has called on the government to seriously consider alternative ways of paying off the deficit created by bailing out the banks.

Serwotka criticised the lack of debate, describing how the public had been "bombarded" by assertions that the size of the public spending deficit necessitated cuts.

"We believe there is a political consensus that there need to be public service cuts," he said. "I want to try and open a debate that we don't think is happening between the political parties," he said.

It was, Serwotka said, "a sad thing" that an increase in taxes was not even being considered by the political parties. "There isn't a real debate about tax in the country, and there should be," he insisted.

The Conservatives, Serwotka said, have been able to dominate the agenda over the past year or so, pushing cuts as the answer to public funding difficulties, "and everybody has fallen for it".

Treasury minister Stephen Timms, who also spoke at the fringe, insisted that the Labour Party was not being led into a bidding war with the other political parties. "We are not taking part in a competition about who can cut the most," he said. "We will protect public services, but we do have to halve [the public deficit] within four years," and, he added, clear it by 2017.

If Labour failed to meet those commitments, added Timms, the government would face the "punishment of the financial markets". "That alternative, and prospects for jobs in the public sector, does not bear thinking about," he added.

Arguing against a regime of cuts, Serwotka insisted there were "other ways of doing it that no-one is talking about" - shelving expensive projects such as Trident or identity cards, for example.

He also questioned the wisdom of the efficiency savings of the past - he linked the cut in 23,000 jobs at HM Revenue and Customs and the £25bn of tax that goes uncollected each year. "That would make quite a start" in reducing the £107bn deficit, he suggested.

Tax avoidance was an even bigger revenue stream that the government was missing out on, Serwotka said, quoting a figure of £100bn a year.

He was particularly critical of the way the nationalised banks, such as the Royal Bank of Scotland, were still employing "swathes of people who advise people on how to avoid tax".

"I don’t understand why Labour are presiding over a regime that allows people to get away with blue murder," Serwotka added.


Timms said headcount reductions had been made possible by the merger of Inland Revenue and Customs and Excise, and he insisted that the government was getting better, not worse, at collecting taxes.


"HMRC is on the case with collecting taxes and it is going to get increasingly good at it," he said, claiming that a recent agreement
with tax-haven Lichtenstein would net the government around £1bn a year.