Trade unions want immunity from the cuts hitting us all

Is there any amount of money that could be poured into public services that would leave them content and convince them not to ask for more?

Is there in fact an amount that they would regard as excessive and that would lead them to call for rebates to tax-payers and a bit of belt-tightening in the state-funded sector?

The answers to these questions would appear to be: all of it, no and no again.

Despite financial distress among the taxpayers who fund public spending and job losses across the private sector, union  leaders are throwing their toys out of the pram at the very suggestion it is time to seek public sector efficiency savings.

As the annual conference of the Trades Union Congress gets under way on Merseyside its general secretary Brendan Barber is using the spectre of widespread civil disorder to intimidate anyone who favours cuts to the most heavily unionised sector of the economy.

Barber has warned of riots should any political party seek reductions in overall state expenditure, despite opinion

polls showing nearly two-thirds of voters want the very same.

In a hyperbolic outburst  worthy of Arthur Scargill at his worst Barber said: “Last time we suffered slash and burn economics we had riots in the streets here in Liverpool.”

Barber says he is “horrified” by the Conservatives talking of public expenditure cuts and suggests new tax raids on the middle classes instead.

The toxic mix of madhouse economics and political blackmail being served up by the unions should be rejected out of hand.

Under Labour  amazing sums of money have been thrown into a public sector that has continued operating on monopolistic lines, with restrictive opening hours, national bargaining, frequent strikes, excessive absence rates among staff and collapsing  productivity.

The vast majority of new posts created have been in unnecessary administrative roles rather than among frontline staff.

At a cost to taxpayers of £40billion a year and rising, final-salary pensions schemes for public sector workers have been protected even as they have died away in the private sector.

Where public sector wages were once 10-15 per cent lower than in the private sector in acknowledgement of the greater job security on offer, that gap has now disappeared.

Under Labour salaries in the public sector have eclipsed the average in the private sector.

One pound in every 10 spent in the economy has been switched from the private  sector to the public sector since Gordon Brown abandoned spending restraint in 2000 and began his long bid to persuade the Labour movement to instal him in Downing Street in place of Tony Blair.

Where Blair had the temerity to call for public service reform and complain of the “scars on my back” he got trying to put it into practice (not that he tried very hard) Brown’s tactic has been to hand over taxpayers’ money, no questions asked.

Spending on health is up from £45billion to over £100bil- lion, education from £38billion to £80billion. The bonanza has

been funded in part by more than 70 tax rises.

 But even this has proved insufficient, so  enormous further sumshave been borrowed in the name of taxpayers.

There are serious doubts about whether international investors will be prepared to carry on lending to us unless the country gets a grip on its chronic overspending.

This year the Government will borrow £175billion, around 12 per cent of national income.

Next year it will do the same. Every sensible commentator has concluded that, even setting aside the impact of the recession, Britain has a substantial “structural” budget deficit.

The national debt is more than £800billion and  rising fast. But during a private lunch for Barber and his union chums  at Chequers on Friday, the PM reportedly told his paymasters not to worry about cuts in public services if Labour wins another term in office, making a nonsense of Peter Mandelson’s claim the party is in favour of “wise spending, not big spending”.

The disgraceful mutual back scratching was further exposed yesterday when it emerged that the Government is using taxpayers’ money to “embed” trade union officials across Whitehall. More than 40 fulltime union officials and nearly 90 part-timers are on the public payroll at a cost approaching £10million.

Funnnily enough that is about the sum the trade unions pump into Labour in a typical year, some 70 per cent of the party’s income.

With an election in the offing their contributions will be higher this year. Despite their ability to sustain a perpetual sense of grievance the unions have actually been given almost everything they have ever asked for by Labour.

Barber has now latched on to the fear of a “double-dip” recession as a further reason not to reduce public spending.

But if he and fellow union leaders get their way there will be no limit to the sums poured into a sclerotic state sector while private individuals see their incomes and incentives to create wealth continually reduced. It is the path to

national bankruptcy.

Barber and his ilk should be challenged on public spending cuts: if not now, when? I suspect their answer would be “never”.

That is why they are not worth listening to.