NASUWT: ‘Coalition government has an irrational contempt of the public sector’
Chris Keates, General Secretary of the NASUWT, the largest teachers’ union, will today speak in the keynote debate on ‘Defending Public Services’ at the TUC Congress in Manchester.
Chris Keates will say:
“The first three months of the Coalition Government have been marked by announcements of reform and savage cuts to vital public services. “Aided by a largely uncritical media, the pubic is being relentlessly drip-fed Government propaganda that cuts are inevitable, we are all in this together and there is no alternative.
“A 10% cut in public spending could lead to 200,000 job losses and a reduction by £17billion of the amount spent in the private sector by public service workers. Yet the Coalition is planning for cuts of up to 40% which will see both public and private sectors ravaged with a devastating impact on the economy.
“There is a need to reduce the deficit but it is sheer economic illiteracy to press ahead with the rapid and sweeping cuts the Coalition has set out.
“The Coalition Government’s plans for schools, hospitals and other public services are not about tackling the nation’s deficit.”They are not some kind of necessary but unpalatable medicine needed to stave off economic meltdown.
“They are an ideologically driven assault on the weakest in society, based on an irrational contempt of the public sector.”There is an alternative. Invest in public services. Learn the lessons from history which starkly illustrate the economic folly of cutting a way out of economic recession.
“We need a coalition of workers and the public to champion and defend the fundamental building blocks of a decent society before they are dismantled and damaged irreparably.”
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