Advocating for Public Services in Scotland

1. Scotland Communications & Campaigns Committee Key messages – Tell a pal

2. Challenges Scotland Communications & Campaigns Committee Key messages • Cuts and privatisation. Ideological opposition to public services • Co-ordinated lobby to cut pay and pensions • Concerted plans to undermine trade union rights and organisation. • Explicit rolling back of the welfare state. • Strategy designed to make changes irreversible

3. Challenges Scotland Communications & Campaigns Committee Key messages • Survey 2010: Most members believe there is waste in public services • Half believe huge cuts needed because of national debt • It is likely many members believe pay restraint needed because of financial situation

4. Positives: UNISON poll March 2015 Scotland Communications & Campaigns Committee Key messages • If govt was to raise £2bn by cracking down on tax avoidance, 58% of Scottish public believe the money should be spent on improving public services. Only 19% said it should cut borrowing and only 17% said it should be spent on income tax cuts • 68% believed that ‘public sector organisations (such as local councils and the NHS)’ are accountable to the public • 72% believed all organisations seeking publicly-funded contracts should have to pay at least the living wage

5. What the experts say Scotland Communications & Campaigns Committee Key messages The economists who actually predicted the crash …Prof David Blanchflower, former member of the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee: “Austerity is simply bad economics…. Austerity is all about spending cuts, which hurt the poor and the vulnerable. This makes the UK government’s recently announced £12bn of extra welfare cuts an unnecessary disgrace in a rich country.” Nobel prize winner Joseph Stiglitz:“GDP per capita in the UK is lower than it was before the crisis. That is not a success”Nobel prize winner Paul Krugman: “Spend now, while the economy remains depressed; save later, once it has recovered. How hard is that to understand?”

6. Some key messages Scotland Communications & Campaigns Committee Key messages • Country not broke – it’s just the money is in the wrong place.(Equality Trust figures) • The richest 1,000 in the UK have doubled their wealth over last 10 years to £547bn, getting richer at the rate of £892.55 a second. • This is more than the combined wealth of the poorest 40% of UK households (£452 billion) - 25.6m people. • The increase alone last year (28bn) could pay for 1,889,963 Living Wage jobs for a year

7. Some key messages Scotland Communications & Campaigns Committee Key messages • Nothing inevitable about cuts – they do not make economic sense – they are a political choice • Economy depends on healthy public sector. Public sector workers spend most of their money in their local communities • Austerity is not working. The debt has increased from 1 trillion to 1.5 trillion since 2010. • Post WW2 debt was over three times higher yet we could build the NHS, housing and infrastructure • Investment and growth, not cuts, reduced the debt in the 1960s/70s

8. What can we do? Scotland Communications & Campaigns Committee Key messages • Get key messages out to members and the general public • Challenge the Tory myths • Publicise UNISON’s alternative budget • Respond to press and media distortions, especially in the local media • Lobby elected members and MPs • Build public service alliances at local level