I have been asked to publish the speech I made yesterday at the TUC rally against the cuts.
This is, near enough, what I said:
I come here today for one reason and one reason only and that is to say that we do not need cuts.
I stress, I am not saying we only need some cuts: I am saying we do not need cuts.
And I am saying this to you as a chartered accountant, but as a chartered accountant who is delighted to have written many of the recent reports on tax published by the TUC and as the researcher of the report published by PCS and the Tax Justice Network on the tax gap in the UK in March this year.
The tax gap is real. HM Revenue and Customs admit that there is £42 billion of tax evasion and avoidance in the UK each year. But I know that their figures for tax avoidance and tax evasion are ludicrously low.
Tax avoidance in the UK is likely to be £25 billion a year.
Tax evasion could easily be £70 billion a year.
That's £95 billion in all.
That’s more than the whole sum George Osborne says he wants to cut.
But yesterday I was on the radio with ConDem minister Lord Freud who was talking about the fact that his blood runs cold when he thinks about the £1 billion of benefit fraud there is in this country. But not a mention did he make of tax avoidance and tax evasion.
And last night I was on Channel 4’s Dispatches programme and if you watched it you saw evidence of the tax avoidance - legal I’m sure - of some of the ConDem Cabinet ministers.
Now don’t get me wrong. I'm not condoning benefit fraud. No one should.
But if we stopped the cuts in staffing at HM Revenue and Customs.
And if we spent another billion pounds each year on tax collection.
And if we had a general anti-avoidance principle in the UK.
And if we stopped the abuse that the domicile rule allows in this country.
And if we had a proper bank tax.
And if we spent the money that the government proposes to spend on tackling benefit fraud on beating tax cheats then I can tell you this with absolute confidence.
We wouldn't get back £1 billion a year. We would get back £20 billion a year.
And that's the annual investment that we need now if we want turn this economy round to create the jobs we so badly need — and which would create the wealth and generate the tax — all the tax — we need to clear the deficit.
Which is exactly why we don’t need cuts.
But the ConDems won't do this.
I'll tell you why.
They would rather the tax cheats of this country have this money than the pensioners of this country have this money,
Better that the cheats have it they say than the children of this country get the education they need.
And the better the accountants, the lawyers and the bankers have this money they say than the sick, the unemployed, the disabled, the public servants and the defenders of this country have it.
That's their choice.
It's the wrong choice.
You know that.
I know that.
Together we must fight them.
We must fight for fair taxation.
We must fight for the jobs of those who will collect tax.
And we must fight so that the honest people of this country can have the money that the ConDems will give to the cheats.
That’s the fight we have on our hands
And friends that the fight we must win.
And before the naysayers get in: no cuts does not mean change. And it does not mean seeking to find efficiency and saving. That should be ongoing.
But I am quite sure we need no cuts. None at al. What we need is regeneration.
And Osborne will as a result be delivering a disaster in the making today.
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The time to debate these issues was at the General Election in May. You comprehensively lost. Every party went into the election saying they would make cuts deeper than Thatcher (Chancellors Debate, Channel 4).
You have absolutely no mandate for resisting spending cuts. It is profoundly undemocratic for you to do so. This is what the left and the TUC are all about – enemies of democracy. And you must – and will – be defeated. And the democrats amongst us will enjoy the howls and squeals as they lose the fight.
@Vaughn Soanes
We don’t need a mandate
We have a right to the freedom of speech
You are denying that
It is you who is seeking to destroy democracy – as the Rioght always has
All liberty is dependent upon the left
@Vaughn Soanes
“Enemies of democracy?” What a bizarre thing to say. Yes all three major parties campaigned on the basis of cuts. But all three said “we don’t want to do this, but…”
Now here’s a way that makes it no longer necessary to cut. Surely the coalition should welcome these ideas?
@Vaughn Soames
You have absolutely no mandate for resisting spending cuts.
How illuminating!
A rightwinger – unconsciously it seems – lets slip their utter contempt for democracy and freedom of speech.
OK, I’ll let you have freedom of speech so as you long as you recognise you have lost the argument and the cuts are duly made.
@Vaughn Soanes
I presume you realise democracy is dependent upon a) a universal mandate b) free speech c) political opposition d) a free press to ensure it has the oxygen of exposure
You seek to deny b) because you say I may not express my view which means in the process you deny c) and as I am blogging this you deny d)
This is the path to totalitarianism
Except it looks like you’ve already got there
As have far too many on the Right
I think in fairness to Vaughn, I assume he is (like me) concerned by your use of the word ‘fight’, which you used 6 times in a short speech.
When Churchill used it, he really meant it literally. I assume you only meant it figuratively. Am I right?
However, in that setting (i.e. a speech during a public protest where feelings are likely to be running hot), I suggest there is a risk that some in your audience may assume you mean the word literally. I am not sure it is responsible for you to use such a word so repeatedly and with such emphasis in that setting. Yelling ‘fire’ in a crowded cinema and all that.
@Adrian
Oh for heaven’s sake – grow up
The TUC is no more likely to be violent than a Quaker Meeting
In your dreams you’d like there to be trouble
But that says a lot about you, and you alone
@Adrian
I guess you tremble under the bedsheets on a Sunday when you think of all those congregations singing ‘Fight the Good Fight’.
@Carol Wilcox
And they want their swords in their hands and bows too at the last night of the proms!
Ban it, NOW
@vaugh soanes
I hate to point it out but no party ‘won’ the general election in may. This consensus for cuts you and the coalition speak of is balderdash. All parties did say they would need to make cuts yes, but both labour and the libdems said to do so this year in the way the tories proposed was a very bad idea, lab/lib mps where elected on a mandate to start deficit reduction cuts at a later and more gradual rate. Taken on numbers (of people voting lab/lib vs tories) more people voted in the general election against cuts this year than for it.
I think the only mandate the coalition has for cuts is that the liberals have pretty much reneged on every major promise they made at the election, to get into government. Possibly one of the most undemocratic things i’ve witnessed from a british political party in my lifetime.
How from all that you can accuse the left of being undemocratic i don’t really know.
regards
simon
So what was the point of your speech?
The government is elected and is likely to be here for the next 5 years. The LibDems are insiders now, and will not pull the plug.
The cuts are happening. Stirring up some pointless, class-laden conflict achieves nothing for ordinary people. Absolutely nothing. All it does is boost the profile of those doing the stirring.
There is a lot of good the unions could be doing in these times – organising retraining, looking at worker cooperatives etc, using their scale, purchasing power and ability to harness diverse talent. You’ve got talents in business, finance, start ups etc. Why wasn’t your speech along those lines?
I work in a working class, very old Labour northern local authority. The unions here have a huge office here down the corridor from the room I share with others, but I have never seen one of them. Not one. Invisible, and useless.
@Adrian
Simply this: if we don’t show their is opposition now there never will be
But – and i stress this – the opposition has to be built around a plan
“the opposition has to be built around a plan”
Richard, you are so right. Remember the Poll Tax rights? They succeeded in abolishing the Poll Tax but instead got the Council Tax. Not much progress there.
Yes, opposing is fine.
But you can’t make it the whole focus of your life, especially when we are 5 years away from an election. Negative energy and all that, and it does nothing to put food on anyone’s table.
Do you think there is any hope for worker cooperatives? I don’t have much time for the unions as my above comment suggested. But this is something they could do, and should be cracking good at.
I know it was tried in Australia in the 70s (a petrol station chain, travel agency are 2 I recall). But I was only a kid at the time so don’t remember the details. Has it ever been tried here?
Part of the big demographic change in Oz has been the transformation of ex blue collar workers in the former rust belts of Wollongong and the outer suburbs of Sydney into successful entrepreneurs. Why can’t it happen in Middlesborough or Liverpool? Is it a mentality thing?
Is this something you might want to promote on your blog? If you do, you will have my 100% support.
@Adrian
Opposition is a big democratic role
But so is working on the plan
That is what I will be doing
And that is a plan for private and public sector
@Adrian
Take a look at the Spanish Mondragon model of worker-owned enterprises.
Thanks Carol
I had a look – interesting. Its history seems more in line with John Lewis (ie reliant on a visionary founder) rather than by trade unions. I know we do have them here in the UK – John Lewis, and even the dreaded PWCs etc of the world are in essence workers cooperatives of sorts – owned by at least some of the workers.
But anything of trade unions doing this?
It seems a gaping opportunity for them across almost every industry (teacher-owned-and-run schools?) but for some reason they are missing it, presumably for a good reason that is lost on me (other than ‘too hard’).
Regards