Responding to the Budget, Prospect General Secretary Mike
Clancy said:
The Chancellor faced a difficult task at this Budget given the
economic pressure caused by the conflict in the Middle East and
its impact on energy prices and inflation.
In that context we welcome the steps he has taken to ease cost of
living pressures, and back the government's long-term vision of a
cheaper, cleaner energy system.
We believe the government could go further in cutting the link
between volatile gas prices and consumer electricity bills, by
building out new renewables and nuclear infrastructure, solving
the grid workforce crisis, and taking direct control of gas
generation and battery rollout to lower prices.
Government rightly believes that in order to secure long-term
growth we need to rethink our relationship with Europe, and we
back the Prime Minister's commitment to reopen the debate on
Brexit and the UK's EU membership.
On defence spending:
We welcome the commitment to fully fund the Defence Investment
Plan and to meet the 3% defence spending target in 2030.
This commitment must be honoured, and we stand ready to work with
government to ensure that this money goes into creating good,
unionised jobs in Britian that can support families and local
communities.
On science:
It is incredibly disappointing that no action was taken to avert
the impending cuts to vital public sector science budgets.
These short-sighted cuts will cause irreparable damage to the
UK's standing as a science nation and must be rethought. Prospect
will continue our campaign to reverse these cuts and back public
sector science.
On civil service reform:
The government continues to insist that AI deployment will result
in huge savings within the public sector, but this is not the
experience of our members who report that AI is not a magic
bullet to fix the civil service.
Where AI is rolled out in government it should be done in
partnership with workers, with the aim of genuinely solving
workload problems, not as an excuse to cut jobs and bank
short-term savings.
Meanwhile there was little on ensuring Departments and ALBs have
the resources and flexibilities required to recruit and retain
the skilled specialists and professionals needed to staff the
smart, strategic and innovative civil service the Treasury says
it wants to see.
"We are concerned that the Government seems to have doubled down
on arbitrary targets for savings to civil service budgets that
risk damaging service delivery and the efficiency of the public
sector as a whole.
On regulation:
We welcome the small change of tone from the government on
regulation, recognising that good regulation is good for the
economy.
"Prospect will be seeking early engagement with the new Better
Regulation Executive to ensure it is informed by the experience
of our members working both in regulatory agencies and regulated
businesses, and considers the overwhelming evidence that the
underfunding of our regulators is behind so many of our problems
in regulation.
On self-employed workers:
The introduction of paternity allowance for self-employed dads is
a win for members in our Bectu sector and our campaigning work to
improve rights for the self-employed. But taking forward badly
thought-through tax reforms simply demonstrates that many parts
of government still don't get the reality of our members' working
lives and the intermittent and unpredictable nature of work. We
will be lobbying hard against these changes.
