Living Wage - public sector leadership

The living wage movement is an international one. There are differences in context and approach, but the underlying principles are the same.

I have spent the last two days in Ontario, Canada, as a guest of Ontario's living wage movement to speak at their public sector leadership conference. They have a very active, community based living wage movement and they are keen to get the public sector more engaged in the campaign.

Colette Murphy from the Atkinson Foundation (plays a similar role to JRF in UK) made the case for public sector leadership because the public sector is powerful and can make a difference. She gave the City of Preston in England a mention, showing how the living wage led to the wider local economic regeneration that shadow chancellor John McDonnell has recently championed. She gave a range of examples of how various public sector leaders in Ontario had supported the living wage and other poverty reduction initiatives. This had led to statutory progress on wages and decent work.

The first panel included local government officials from Hamilton and Toronto who described what action they had taken on wages and poverty reduction, although still short of being an accredited employer. This included using procurement to ensure that they only did business with decent employers, creating a level playing field. Deanna Ogle, from Living Wage for Families, described the progress they were making in British Columbia, particularly since the election of a progressive government. Procurement is an important element of their strategy, including extending it into vulnerable sectors. All emphasised the importance of political and internal champions.

My presentation outlined the context for public sector engagement in the Scottish Living Wage and Fair Work. The focus of my presentation was on how the public sector can take the living wage forward through pay policy and encouragement including supporting accreditation. I set out in some detail how we changed the procurement rules to ensure the living wage reaches a wider workforce, particularly more vulnerable sectors like social care. 

After lunch, Melissa Cameron presented the findings of her Master's degree on the impact of the living wage. Detailed interviews with workers who benefited from the living wage showed life changing benefits in their lives. It also showed the wider public policy benefits to the local economy and health.

The next panel included three living wage employers who made the business case for the living wage, in three very different sectors. The common theme was that they had decided that the old race to the bottom model wasn't working and a new model, which included the living wage, was a better model. They made the usual arguments around productivity, turnover and reputational gain. However, they also evidenced the very clear values than ran through their approach - living the company mission statement. As one panellist put it, 'Businesses that don't stand for something, stand for nothing'. Key challenges included the importance of communicating effectively with all employees and winning trust. They also reported positive consumer and supplier responses, particularly with younger customers.

The final session was on how to influence the forthcoming provincial and municipal elections in Ontario. The focus of their campaign is to achieve a $15 minimum wage, but also to get the public sector to engage through procurement. They are building coalitions, planning campaign days, but also focusing on real people telling their stories. I particular liked the 'Adopt a Councillor' campaign, which built a relationship from policy commitment to implementation and beyond.

In the round up plenary it was obvious that there was a lot of energy in the campaign across Ontario. In a big geographical area there are obvious benefits in getting the local groups together to learn from each other. They obviously have some big political battles to fight, but they are certainly up for it!

Labour Party National (UK) Policy Forum

The National (UK) Policy Forum gathered this weekend in Leeds. Representing the Scottish Labour Party is always a challenge at these events because devolution means that we only have a direct interest in a few reserved matters. The Scottish Policy Forum process will start this Autumn to develop policy on developed matters.

The main purpose of the weekend was to look at the draft consultation papers, which will shortly go out for views from members.

Being the Labour Party, we love a constitutional row, and the NPF managed to spend more than an hour squabbling over how the vacant chair's post should be elected. In essence, the NPF was only given a few days notice of the election and the NEC Officers ruled that there has to be at least 7 days notice. So the election is deferred. It wasn't an edifying sight with some pretty uncomradely behaviour. It is beyond me why this couldn't have been resolved beforehand. Some proper rules and standing orders for the NPF in the UK rule book might help.

Jeremy eventually got to address the meeting. He pointed to us having largest party membership in Europe as a strength and a resource of knowledge to help develop our policy offer for the next election. He didn't duck Brexit, clearly setting out Labour's position that any deal must protect jobs and workers rights. His focus was on key Labour issues like homelessness, linking that to the English council elections and the funding of local government. An issue we are also facing in Scotland.

He used the collapse of Carrillion to make the case for greater public ownership and against outsourcing in the public sector. Confirming a real Living Wage of £10 per hour. Investment in  English housing, education etc would also give Scotland's Parliament the resources to end austerity. The speech didn't break much new ground, but was well received by delegates keen to get onto the substantive business of the NPF.

I went to the 'Future of work' session, which is mostly reserved. The draft consultation is largely based on the 20 point plan on employment rights published before the 2017 manifesto. Barry Gardiner, the Shadow Trade minister identified the implications of dodgy trade deals, including a race to the bottom in workers rights and deregulation. I highlighted the impact of such deals on devolved issues, drawing on the work in Scotland on procurement and Fair Work. I felt the paper could say more about the inadequacies of the Taylor review and the U.K. Government's response. We are well past the stage of nudging bad employers into fair work practices. The paper also says nothing about how Labour should respond to the ageing workforce.

In the second breakout session I went to the work, pensions and inequality discussion. The focus of this consultation is tackling in-work poverty and working age inequalities. The last Labour government did a lot to address child and pensioner poverty, so this focus is welcome. My contribution focused on making the case for tackling inequality, something we as socialists take for granted, but is not well understood more widely. I also think we need to do more work on understanding the interaction between wages and benefits in tackling in work poverty for working families. Finally, a plea for a clear policy on occupational pensions. We need to reform the system and bring greater value into pension provision that is being ripped off by investment managers.

The final plenary session on Saturday was on health inequalities, although inevitably it was largely about the dire state of the English NHS.  John Ashworth gave a very clear exposition of the problems and the direction of travel for Labour's response. He specifically rejected a Royal Commission as a trap. If you want properly funded and publicly delivered NHS, you need to vote in a Labour government.

Sunday started with Katy Clark giving us an overview of the party democracy review. The focus for the NPF is the third stage of the review that ends on 28 June on how the party makes policy. There was a recognition that the NPF process does bring together all parts of the party and gives an opportunity to develop policy over a longer time period. However, the Party doesn't use technology well and members who do know about the process, don't often get feedback on the ideas they have submitted. We also have to recognise that the Party has to have a narrative on the issues of the day that can't wait for the conclusion of a two year process. That inevitably means that NPF members can feel marginalised. Policy Commissions have a range of practical difficulties, for example, I am on a policy commission that is 90% devolved. There was a call for more regional events and better moderation of the Your Britain website.

The third breakout session I attended was on a Greener Britain. Other than energy generation, most of these issues are devolved. But as the shadow minister Alan Whitehead pointed out, we need to join up all aspects of this policy. For example, if we don't decarbonise energy generation, we will be powering electric cars with dirty energy. Alan is also strong on linking industrial policy to environmental policy, something that the Scottish Government could be better at. BiFab being an example of crisis management, rather than linking up into a long term policy for a just transition. Large scale incineration is clearly a concern in several parts of England and somewhat dominated the discussion. The UK government is particularly weak on recycling and air pollution.

And finally, it was the Brexit plenary. Keir Starmer set out Labour's current position in opposing a hard Tory Brexit, which is not an attempt to refight the referendum, based on his six tests. In particular, no deregulation or undermining workers rights. He also understood the devolution issues, with a particular focus on Northern Ireland. 

Francis O'Grady emphasised the importance of finding a solution that brings people together, given the close referendum result. She focused on the trade impact on jobs as well as employment standards. All options should be on the table including the single market and the customs union. CETA type options leaves us open to corporate interests in rigged courts. Rebecca Long-Bailey focused on the economic implications, including jobs and skills. Barry Gardiner emphasised the risks of dodgy trade deals.

Firming up Labour's position on Brexit has practical and political challenges. Practical in the sense that the Tories are struggling to develop a coherent government negotiating position, and therefore scrutiny is challenging. Political, in the sense that Labour has to find a balance between respecting the referendum result and protecting the country from the consequences of a hard Brexit. While like most NPF members I support a soft Brexit, I believe that more policy work needs to be done on how the options for our future relations with the EU impact on our manifesto commitments.

This was my first full NPF meeting. Overall, I was impressed by the quality of the contributions from delegates and the work that had been done by the policy commissions. Even in policy areas which are devolved, it was useful to hear how these issues are being addressed in England. 

I hope this report gives a flavour of the discussions and members will be able to engage in detail with the consultation papers shortly. If I can help facilitate local discussions with affiliates or CLPs, please feel free to get in touch.

Dave Watson

d.watson@unison.co.uk

Time to look again at policing in Scotland

The latest instalment in the sorry story that is Police Scotland has played out with the resignation of  the latest chief constable. Now is the time to step back and take a longer term view of the governance of Police Scotland.

From the outset UNISON Scotland set out a range of concerns over the structure and governance of Police Scotland, and even when the Scottish Government decided to plough on with the merger, we suggested some practical ways a national force could be governed better. Proposals that had the added advantage of retaining millions of pounds of revenue funding that went out of Police Scotland and into the Treasury's pocket, due to the botched VAT fiasco. 

I am tempted just to say, I told you so. While I am entitled to a bit of job satisfaction, there are wider issues that still need to be addressed.

The new Chair of the Scottish Police Authority, Susan Deacon, is in my view entitled to say it's time to draw a line under the Gormley episode. Whatever prurient interest there may be in the allegations, the public interest case is limited. The simple fact is that his position was untenable and it is right that we move on. However, I do accept the point made by Moi Ali and others that there is a case for looking again at professional regulation.

I do think the minister went beyond his remit in the discussions with the former SPA Chair over the chief constable's return to work. However, it is hard to blame him for asking some pretty relevant questions, the answers to which should have been immediately forthcoming. It is frankly incredible that the SPA appears not have considered a range of issues that even a junior HR manager would have identified.

The problem for Police Scotland and the SPA is that this is just the latest in a long line of problems. Operational decisions have been criticised included the raids on sex workers in Edinburgh, stop and search tactics and the routine arming of police officers. Right from the outset there were territorial squabbles between the SPA and Police Scotland that have never been properly resolved. There was no final business case for the merger and force has been beset by financial problems throughout its troubled existence.

On top of all that the Scottish Government imposed the police officer number targets that resulted in police officers replacing specialist civilian staff, often at twice the cost. The statutory duty of Best Value was abandoned to political expediency.

The structure was designed to allow the minister and his civil servants to dabble in the service and the governance arrangements were muddled. It would take a particularly skilled set of chief officials to manage their way through this minefield. Neither the SPA or Police Scotland have been blessed with such appointments. 

In my experience of chief constables, over some 35 years of representing police staffs, is that they fall into two broad categories. The traditional command and control coppers who regard scrutiny and good governance principles as an evil necessity, to be ignored as far as possible. Then there are those who recognise the value of listening to staff who deliver the service and local politicians who understand their communities. Sadly, they are the exception, but Scotland had at least a few of those before Police Scotland. Skills that were unlikely to be recognised when appointing to a highly centralised service that has insufficient local governance.

So, where do we go from here? Five years on, having lost two chief constables and countless others in leadership positions, it is time for a review. That review has to start by setting out clear governance structures at the top - including the Cabinet Secretary for Justice, the SPA and Police Scotland. If we are to retain a national police force (not a given in my view), it has to have a much strengthened local accountability structures, with matching devolved management. Finally, it has to be built on sound finances and modernised using Best Value principles.

I do think the appointment of Susan Deacon was a bit of inspired thinking. She has the intellectual, governance and political skills required. However, putting a competent person into an incompetent structure is rarely enough. If a cabinet reshuffle brings a new minister - that would be a good opportunity for a rethink. If not, then parliament should intervene.

Council funding - a step forward, but not out of the woods

The Scottish Budget dance has taken another swirl as the Bill passes its first stage. Let’s have a look at what the changes mean for local government and pay.

First a quick recap. The draft budget proposed no cash increase for local government, which meant a ‘real terms’ cut in council budgets of around £153m. This was in a year when the Scottish Government had a cash increase in its own budget from Westminster of £188m. They also announced a new pay policy, but allocated nothing in the budget to pay for it.

After the Finance Settlement was published with details of individual local authority allocations, councils spotted an ‘accounting error’, which after the government correction resulted in a number of winners and losers.

On the day of the Stage 1 debate this week, the Government announced that an agreement had been reached with the Greens to support the budget, in return for an additional £159.5m of revenue funding. No repeat of last year’s padding the numbers by mixing capital and revenue. They also improved the pay policy by extending the 3% band to those earning up to £36,500. It remains at 2% for those earning above that.

Dealing first with the revenue funding, this roughly means that councils are now getting a standstill budget in ‘real terms’. However, that does not mean there won’t be more cuts in the coming year.

That’s because ‘real terms’ means an assumption that inflation will be 1.4% next year. No one really believes this will happen, certainly not a prudent council finance director. The OBR has forecast that the CPI will be 2.4% next year and the RPI 3.3%. Pay alone, which is 55% of the budget, will be around double the government’s inflation assumption according to the pay policy.

Then there will be the usual round of ‘unavoidable commitments’. These include demographic change, which IJBs alone calculate at 2% per annum. Most IJBs are already reporting big shortfalls in their planned budgets for next year and will be looking for additional financial support. Not helped by the £66m allocated for the living wage and other new care duties only being ‘support’, not the full cost.

COSLA calculated all these demands at 2.6%, plus 3% for a realistic inflation estimate. That’s where their £545m figure comes from, which was the basis for Scottish Labour’s budget proposal.

That leaves pay. Does the revised budget meet the Scottish Government pay policy, let alone the trade union side claim?

A 3% pay increase costs councils around £210m. As pay makes up around 55% of the revenue budget, £88m of the new money is for pay. Then councils can increase the council tax by 3% raising £77m, which by the same proportions is £42m for pay. That’s a total of £130m, or a shortfall of £80m. They could of course meet the cost by spending almost all the new money on pay, but that leaves almost nothing for inflation and those unavoidable commitments.

Councils also have less flexibility in other areas. They can increase charges again, but the income is dropping off every year they do this, quite apart from the regressive nature of many charges. Councils took £79m from their reserves last year, not something they can continue to do.

In summary, the extra money is very welcome and makes a significant contribution to the draft budget shortfall. It also means that local government is suffering as badly, but not much worse (this year at least), as other departments outwith the protected spending areas. However, it still means an underfunded pay policy and service cuts.