Unbiased Pros and cons of EU membership - Part One : The EU, Immigration and its Effects on the UK

Immigration is one of the big issues in the EU referendum debate, with a lot of claims about how harmful or beneficial it is to the UK. Some of this is based in fact. A lot of it is not.

As someone who is (relatively) neutral on the EU referendum, though tending towards reluctantly voting Remain, and knows a little about the EU, I’m  trying to provide some facts to help people looking for some unbiased information on the pros and cons of being in the EU.

EU Freedom of Movement

The EU does have a Freedom of Movement rule, but this rule only applies to  “workers” and citizens of EU member states and their families. It does not apply to refugees or other migrants coming from outside the EU. The only exceptions would be the minority of asylum seekers who are granted not only refugee status, but full citizenship in an EU member country.

Would leaving the EU end Freedom of Movement or not?

Norway and Switzerland, who are not members of the EU, trade with the EU through their membership of the European Economic Area or EEA (basically a free trade zone without political integration of the kind most of the Leave campaign back).

However EEA membership requirements include the same Freedom of Movement rules with the EU as EU membership does.

It is possible that the UK, which is a considerably larger country and economy than Norway or Switzerland, might be able to negotiate a special deal that granted it single market access without freedom of movement, just as it negotiated opt outs from the Schengen agreement and from adopting the Euro as a currency as an EU member.

It would however be one country of 64 million people negotiating with a bloc of 27 countries with 440 million odd people, so those could be tough negotiations.

And while some remaining EU member states might want to continue access to the UK for their exporters, Germany and France would have a motive to make an example of the UK to discourage other countries from leaving the EU. German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schauble recently ruled out allowing the UK to stay in the single market if it leaves the EU (though of course he is just one minister of one EU government) (1)

A migrant crisis in the EU?

The scale of the “migrant crisis” in the EU, and how much it affects Britain, is also greatly exaggerated by much of the media. To see the full details, see the blog post on this link. In summary though, last year (2015) the total number of people coming to the EU from outside it was under 1% of its 504 million population spread between 28 countries. Many of the people who arrive each year leave or are deported. Only a small minority of these come to Britain. The UK gets a very small share of asylum applications relative to our population compared to other EU countries (2).

Open Borders?

There is a lot of talk of “open borders”. The EU does not have open borders with non-EU countries. Until last year some EU states – those that signed up to the Schengen agreement – did have open borders with one another. This has never included the UK or Ireland, which did not sign the agreement and have always required passports to be shown and customs checks for people entering or leaving the UK.

Several countries, including Hungary, have broken the Schengen agreement last year during the “migrant crisis”, by closing their borders with other EU countries.

British citizens living or working in other EU countries under Freedom of Movement

Another factor to consider is that somewhere between 1.2 million and 2.2 million British people are living or working in other EU countries, mostly under EU Freedom of Movement rules. And some of them do claim benefits (though, like citizens of other EU states in the UK, some of these are in-work benefits). (3) – (5).

If the UK did leave the EU, and did manage to get a special deal that meant Freedom of Movement rules didn’t apply, it seems massively unlikely that remaining EU member states would continue to allow British citizens Freedom of movement in their countries.

Some lawyers argue that under the 1969 Vienna Convention anyone who had lived in another EU country before the UK left the EU would retain “acquired rights” to stay there even after the UK left the Union (6).

But other lawyers argue the opposite, saying the Vienna Convention applies only to bilateral agreements between two states, and not to relations between the EU and former EU member states (7).

Either way UK citizens who wanted to go to live, work or claim benefits in other EU countries after the UK left the UK would have no legal right to do so.

And if the UK expelled citizens of other EU countries, they would almost certainly retaliate in kind by expelling British citizens from their countries.

Citizens of other EU countries living in the UK under Freedom of Movement

Most of the estimated 3 million citizens of other EU countries living in the UK under the same rules are in work (8) – (9).

Whether they would be able to stay in the UK if the UK left the EU would depend on the same factors are for UK citizens living in other EU countries outlined above.

It would also depend on what policies the UK government decided on and what agreements it could make with the EU.

What is certain is that if no deal was struck then most EU citizens currently in the EU would not meet the current UK government standards applied to non-EU nationals as required for a visa (10).

What percentage of immigrants to the UK are from the EU?

Roughly half. Net migration to the UK from the EU in the last quarter was 184,000. From non-EU countries it was 188,000 (click this link and scroll down to table 2). (11)

The number of people coming from EU countries has increased a bit faster than those coming from non-EU countries since 1990 though, probably due to the new member countries that have joined since then.

How does immigration from the EU benefit or harm the UK?

The big area where EU membership does have an effect on immigration in the UK is immigration from other EU member states to the UK increasing our population. Is this harmful to the economy and existing population of the UK, beneficial, neither, or a mixture though?

Does immigration increase unemployment and /or push down wages?

It’s often claimed by anti-immigration campaigners that immigration is pushing down wages and increasing unemployment in the UK, as well as overloading public services like the NHS and schools with more people than they can handle.

A London School of Economics study looking at wages, unemployment and levels of immigration in each of England’s counties between 2004 and 2012 found no connection between levels of immigration and unemployment or wages (12).

Some other studies found a small increase in unemployment caused by immigration from the EU, especially during recessions, but overall found there has not been enough research to say for certain (13).

The idea that immigration just causes unemployment and lower wages is based on missing out half the picture though. Yes immigration increases the supply of labour, but any population increase, whether due to immigration or not, also increases demand for goods and services from the same extra people, not only from the public sector but from private companies too. More people means more sales of products and services for lots of businesses, meaning more profits and more jobs.

If that was not the case then every time a country’s population increased for any reason – whether immigration or more people being born than are dying, it would immediately get poorer. The UK’s population has been increasing for centuries – and it’s been getting richer all the time.

So the overall effect on the unemployment rate and wages from any population increase should be roughly zero, all other factors being equal.

The exception of course is that some migrant workers send or take much of the money they earn working in the UK back to their home countries, which would reduce the wealth of the UK and demand for goods and services here compared to if people born here or staying here permanently had that job.

Strain on public services?

A rapid increase in population may well put strain on public services in some areas, especially as more immigrants settle or work in London and the South East, where most of the jobs are, and where they are more likely to be able to make contact with family members or friends who came before them.

Citizens of other EU countries make up about 5% of NHS staff, about the same proportion of the UK’s population who are citizens of other EU countries, but they make up 10% of NHS doctors (14) – (15).

Immigrants and the EU are easy to blame for national governments looking for someone to blame for the effects of their own policies. The NHS and schools have been under considerable strain for decades due to the “internal market” introduced under Thatcher, and the exorbitant cost of Private Finance Initiatives or PFIs brought in under Major’s Conservative government in the 1990s, expanded under both New Labour (who renamed them ‘Public Private Partnerships’ or PPPs) and then by the Conservatives again (renamed ‘PF2s’) under Cameron and Osborne.

For more on this see e.g the Migration Observatory link here  (which basically says the statistics to decide this have never been collected),  Full Fact on this link and the anti-immigration Migration Watch page on this link

Housing shortages and immigration

It’s often argued that immigration is the cause of the shortage of housing and high rents and rising house prices in the UK. How true is this though?

Most studies show 60% or more of immigrants in the UK rent privately owned properties, and that immigrants are more likely to rent houses from private landlords than people born here (16) – (17).

Studies also show that house prices actually fall in areas where immigrants live, as less people who aren’t immigrants want to live there (18).

While about 12.5% of the UK’s population were born in another country, figures from pretty much every neutral source show about the same percentage of immigrants as people born here are in social housing. So the common claim that immigrants get to “jump the queue” for social housing is false (19) – (21).

The shortage of social or council housing is largely caused by governments from Heath’s on selling off council houses at a discount price in order to get votes, without providing local councils with anything like enough money to build or buy replacements for most of them. This, along with a fall in the percentage of new houses that are publicly owned, has depleted the UK’s stock of social housing massively.

There are also over 1 million privately owned properties which no one lives in. So inequality is probably another cause (22).

The rate of population increase (mostly driven by increasing immigration in the last few decades) can’t be ignored as a factor, but it’s far from the only one – and not as high as many people believe. The net increase in population of 336,000 last year for instance was an increase of just over half of one per cent on the existing population of 64 million (23).

Population increase resulting in harm to environment and quality of life
Versus Immigration helping with our ageing population

The one area where immigration might be more harmful is that any population increase when population is already high can lead to damage to the environment and to peoples’ quality of life by more of the country becoming urbanised as more trees are cut down, more fields built over with houses, more roads are built, more cars are driven etc.

Immigration is certainly the main cause of population increase in the UK and most other developed countries, with birth rates among people born here lower than those among immigrants. The net increase in population last year was around 336,000, added to an existing population of 64 million, an increase of slightly over half of one per cent (24).

It’s also certainly true that the long term trend of immigration since the UK joined the EC and then EU has been to keep increasing, especially since the 1992 Maastricht Treaty which established Freedom of Movement within the EU, though even before we joined the EU the trend was to increase (25).

It seems likely that that trend will continue.

I would argue that the damage population increase can do to the environment and quality of life is the one area that EU membership and Freedom of Movement could be harmful overall to the UK.

But this has to be balanced against the way that immigration from the poorest countries can help the poorest people in the EU, and their families. Money sent home by migrant workers dwarfs all foreign aid combined.

This , of course, means some of the money earned by immigrants in the UK is not spent here, so does not increase demand for goods or services here.

The people who are migrant workers sending money home though, are also the ones who go home after earning some money, so those people don’t increase the UK’s population in the long term.

Plus the UK, like all developed countries has problems caused by an increasing average age. The proportion of pensioners, who require both pensions and more health care, is rising. The proportion of people of working age is falling. If we reduce the number of immigrants the proportion of pensioners may increase faster as the average age of immigrants and refugees is lower, most of them being of working age (26) – (27).

There are other possible ways to counteract this – for instance in France the 35-hour week and benefit incentives for having two or more children have given it a higher than average birth rate of 2 per woman (28).

But then population increase of any kind – whether due to people born here having children, or due to immigration, is just as harmful to the environment and quality of life.

So there are benefits and costs to either increasing or reducing population, though at some point we have to face up to the need to reduce the entire world’s population and the amount of pollution created per person.

The Real Scandal?

The biggest scandal (in my opinion) surrounding people coming from outside the EU to all countries in the EU is that the EU and its member governments (including the UK) are sending so many refugees back to countries which are clearly not safe, like Turkey, which has been sending Syrian refugees back to the civil war in Syria for years and is not really even a democracy any more (the President has stripped opposition MPs of their immunity from prosecution in preparation for jailing some of them). On top of that the Turkish government has restarted a civil war inside Turkey with its own Kurdish minority, and the UN has had to cut off food aid to many refugees in Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan as governments in the EU and other wealthy countries haven’t donated enough money to fund it.

Thatcher and Thatcherism didn't save Britain – They've caused the problems it has today ; the Falklands War was as avoidable as Iraq ; and Thatcher didn’t promote freedom but backed and armed dictatorships

I won’t celebrate anyone’s death, but Prime Minister David Cameron’s claim that Thatcher “saved our country” and the £10 million state funeral (of which taxpayers will pay at least half the costs) are party political propaganda and a slap in the face to all the unemployed and disabled people facing benefit cuts today (1) – (2). The message is “She mattered, you don’t”.

Thatcherites, like Thatcher, are not revolutionaries but reactionaries who want to go back to the 19^th century when there was no welfare state or government regulation

Thatcherites see themselves as radical reformers going up against “the establishment” and “vested interests”. For Thatcher this meant trade unions and public sector professionals like teachers, nurses, doctors and lecturers. For brave Chancellor George Osborne, a public school and Oxford University educated millionaire Chancellor of the Exchequer, it means the vast oppressive charities and churches who help the poorest (4).

Thatcherites aim to roll back all the progress made by Atlee’s post-war Labour government and take us back to the 19^th century with no trade unions, no employee rights, no welfare state and no NHS (these “only encourage dependency”) – back to the poorhouse, the workhouse and the poor dying of hunger, cold or illness and being blamed for their own suffering.

It’s new only in rejecting the One Nation conservatism of politicians like Ian Gilmour MP (who condemned Thatcher’s policies and record in his book ‘Dancing With Dogma) and Prime Minister Harold MacMillan.

From On Yer Bike in the 80s to Workers and Shirkers today –
Different Decade, Same Thatcherite attempt to impose ideology over reality

The current Conservative government even continues to claim that it hopes its welfare “reforms” will “encourage people to work” even when it’s own (fiddled) figures show over 5 times more people unemployed (2.52 million) than job vacancies (494,000) (5) – (6). (The actual ratio is higher as the unemployment figures are fiddled downwards by using methods including counting people on unpaid temporary “workfare” placements as “employed”  (7).)

So basic arithmetic shows there are no jobs available for over 80% of unemployed people in the UK ; but Thatcherites have never let facts or logic get in the way of an ideology which pretends that the most powerful and wealthiest have no responsibility for the massive effects of their actions, while the poorest and most vulnerable, who have no power or influence, are supposedly entirely to blame for every problem.

Osborne claims people on benefits are all “shirkers” who don’t work (when many do) and don’t work by choice (8) – (9).

So for the first time since 1945 benefits are being cut to punish all the supposed “shirkers” (inflation is 2.2%, but the rise in benefits this year is limited to 1% -a real terms cut) (10)

This is exactly the same crap that was shovelled by Thatcher and her ministers in the 80s, when, after being elected on a campaign that promised to get unemployment down, they increased it from 2 million to over 3 million – and then people like Norman Tebbit told the unemployed to “get on yer bike” and get a job.

Thatcher didn’t save Britain – she began the policies that led to our current problems

Far from saving Britain, Thatcher caused many of our current problems.

Setting  us on the road to the banking crisis

As the late Conservative MP Ian Gilmour pointed out, by raising interest rates to double figures to cool a financial sector boom in the South-East of England, Thatcher destroyed much of Britain’s manufacturing industry, which was pushed into recession by the resulting over-valuation of the pound (hurting exports) and unaffordable credit, leaving us over-reliant on the financial sector, which she began the deregulation of with the 1986 ‘Big Bang’ (this being the main cause of the boom, which was as much a bubble as the one that burst recently) (11) - (12).

Destroying key industries due to blinkered ideology

She closed down our steel industry, while other countries, like Germany, continued subsidising steel and other key industries, even under conservative Chancellors like Helmut Kohl. As a result Germany’s economy remains stronger and its unemployment lower than ours.

(And in fact as Nobel prize winning South Korean economist Ha Joon Chang has shown with copious historical examples, every single developed country got that way by subsidising and protecting industries until they were strong enough to compete internationally (13))

Selling off assets that provided revenue to government

She sold off valuable assets like British Gas and British Telecom, losing the government revenue which could have funded the NHS, public education and the welfare state.  While it’s likely ideology was the main driving force for these privatisations, they also funded short term income tax cuts which helped her win elections. No wonder former Conservative Prime Minister Harold MacMillan accused her of “selling the family silver”. In fact it was worse than that. She sold the geese that laid the golden eggs.

Deregulation and privatisation leading to consumers being fleeced

Her privatisation and deregulation of every economic sector led not to greater competition but to oligopoly – sectors dominated by a few large companies which took over smaller firms or pushed them out of business, before charging customers whatever they like due to informal price fixing or simple profiteering. For instance today a handful of energy companies dominate Britain’s market for electricity and gas for the domestic and business markets.

While benefits for the poorest are cut and capped, these companies are allowed to charge whatever they like. They have doubled their profit margin by percentage on their average customer between 2011 and the first quarter of 2013 – under two years. The gap between their own costs and the prices they charge to customers rises constantly. The heads of these companies are rewarded with knighthoods (14) – (16).

This is Thatcherism again. Those who have wealth are assumed always to deserve it, while those who are poor are assumed to be poor because they are lazy or spendthrifts. In reality some of the wealthiest people in Britain started off with wealth or a family with connections to get them jobs on the boards of big firms – and then used their own wealth, or the company’s, or the bank’s, to buy political influence with donations to party funds, effectively exempting their company or their entire sector from any significant regulation. (And no, I’m not saying this is true of anyone who has more money than average, some did work hard for it and take risks and pay their employees fair wages).

Selling off council houses without replacing them –
meaning we have to pay housing benefit for rent for private landlords

She began the sale of council houses, without buying or building replacements. Today, due to the shortage of council houses, councils spend a fortune renting social housing from private landlords or paying housing benefits that go to those landlords in rent.

This is the main reason for high benefits payments to some families – because most of it goes on housing benefit that goes straight into the pocket of private landlords – but David Cameron’s Thatcherite government is capping the benefits payments to people stuck in this situation as if this was their fault, rather than buying and building enough council houses (17).

Every Daily Mail or Sun headline about asylum seekers or people on benefits living in mansions is a result of this policy, begun by Thatcher, but rather than blame her and her successors in government, they blame weak, powerless, easy targets instead.

Thatcher and the Falklands War –
Not a war hero but either incompetent
or else deliberately engineering
a war that wouldn’t have happened otherwise

The attempt to present her as a great war leader in relation to the Falklands, with 800 members of the military to be present at her funeral, is especially hard to reconcile with the historical facts.

When the Argentinians began talking of taking the Falklands in 1977, Labour Prime Minister Jim Callaghan and Foreign Secretary David Owen were persuaded by military chiefs to send a Royal Navy fleet to the South Atlantic to signal Britain would fight any invasion. The Argentinians backed down. In a similar situation in 1982 Thatcher’s government withdrew the last Royal Navy ship from the area during spending cuts, leading the Argentine military junta to believe Britain would not fight for the islands (18) – (19). They invaded – and then Thatcher declared war. Hundreds died as a result.

Some suggest that Thatcher, then the most unpopular Prime Minister in British history, after increasing unemployment to over 3 million, wanted a war to restore her popularity (20).

It’s impossible to know whether this was the result of blind ideology in imposing spending cuts and incompetence in not caring where they were made, or whether Thatcher wanted the Argentinians to believe Britain wouldn’t fight in order to get a war to restore her political fortunes. Either way she was responsible for an easily avoidable war and all the deaths in it. By any rational standard she should be condemned for not preventing war as simply and easily as Callaghan did rather than lauded for winning a war against an inferior military.

In the case of the 1990-1991 Gulf War against Iraq, which Thatcher committed British troops to shortly before her party got her to resign over the poll tax, there is no such doubt. The Bush (senior) administration and the Kuwaiti monarchy duped Saddam into war with the US over Kuwait. Bush and his advisers sought to repeat Thatcher’s feat of going from unpopularity on domestic unemployment and recession to election victory on a tide of war fuelled nationalism ; they failed.

The Poll Tax

The poll tax, which resulted in Thatcher’s resignation, was a local council tax under which everyone paid exactly the same amount irrespective of their income. It caused riots the last time it had been tried by an English ruler, in 1381, resulting in the peasants’ revolt. The Conservatives, who supposedly want everyone to know the history of Britain, seemed to be massively ignorant of it – they thought the poll tax was going to be hugely popular. Instead, as in 1381, it brought mass non-payment and riots. Thatcher, whose supporters claim she was acting on behalf of the “ordinary person in the street” showed she had no more clue what many of them wanted than medieval English kings knew of peasants’ needs.

A lover of freedom? Thatcher’s foreign policy

We’re told Thatcher was a “lover of freedom”. This is only true if you interpret freedom in the narrow neo-liberal sense of freedom for companies, banks and those with lots of money to do what they like – pay less tax due to tax cuts, avoid tax through tax havens, avoid regulation, charge customers whatever they want to, etc.

She certainly opposed Communism, but her role in it’s downfall, like Reagan’s, was negligible. Dissidents and protesters in the Soviet bloc did far more, as did Gorbachev – and before him Brezhnev by spending so much on the Soviet military that he drove the USSR’s economy into the ground. Her support for “freedom” elsewhere wasn’t just non-existent – she was supporting , training and arming the forces of many dictatorships.

General Pinochet aided the British war effort by allowing them to use Chilean ports. Thatcher treated him as an honoured friend after that, despite Pinochet having overthrown the elected government of President Salvador Allende in a military coup and having thousands of people tortured and killed.

She condemned Nelson Mandela’s ANC as terrorists and refused to place economic sanctions on Apartheid South Africa, though we are assured that in private she was putting verbal pressure on South African Presidents to free Mandela. Sanctions would have made considerably more difference and much sooner.

Thatcher’s government also provided training, tens of millions of pounds of money and dozens of jet fighter bombers to Mugabe’s military as he was massacring members of the tribes of his political opponents by the thousand. Perence Shiri, one of the officers who headed the genocide was subsequently allowed to come to Britain to train at the Royal Defence College. The massacres were played down by the Foreign Office as “exaggerated” (21) – (22).

She even armed Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s and right up until the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in the middle of 1990; including selling him chemicals used as ingredients for chemical weapons, spare parts for tanks and attempting (but failing) to sell him hawk jets which could be used to bomb ground targets (as they later were in Indonesia) while Saddam was using chemical weapons on Iranians and Iraqi Kurds and carrying out his Anfal campaign of genocide against the latter. (23) - (24)

On top of this, British taxpayers ended up having to pay the £1 billion bill for Saddam’s purchases from British arms companies, as after the 1991 Gulf War there was no chance of his government paying – and Thatcher had approved the exports under Export Credit Guarantees  (25).

She signed the Al Yamamah oil for arms deal with the Saudi monarchy, which continues to be an absolute dictatorship imposing a medieval version of Islamic law – and torturing confessions out of suspects before executing them by beheading. Her son Mark Thatcher had a £1 million house purchased for him by a company based on a tax haven and owned by Wafic Said, a dodgy Middle Eastern arms deal broker. Said also gave Mark a £14,000 Rolex watch. Said’s wife donated large amounts to the Conservative party before the 2010 election . Mark Thatcher has denied rumours that he received millions more as part of the deal (26) – (27).

Margaret Thatcher also sent the SAS to train the mass murdering Khmer Rouge’s monarchist allies in laying land mines in the 1980s (28).

Supporting mass murdering dictators, monarchist allies of ultra-nationalist regimes guilty of genocide and governments which gave black people no rights whatsoever seem like strange ways to promote freedom, but then Thatcher never really supported freedom or democracy in the sense that most people use the words.

A Prime Minister who divided Britain – just like Major and Blair and Cameron

Thatcher was the first post-war Prime Minister to divide Britain, largely through strident English nationalism thinly disguised as British nationalism, combined with constant attempts to divide the majority in order to make conquering them easier.

Those who had jobs were encouraged to hate those who were unemployed as supposedly all lazy scroungers, while Thatcher continued to drive unemployment higher and higher. Those who worked in the private sector were told they should disdain public sector employees and trade unions as supposedly selfish “vested interests” – and the working class were encouraged to hate the middle class as effete namby pamby liberals who were meant to be out of touch with reality and had more education than was good for them. Hatred of foreigners, minority nationalities, religions and ethnic groups, as well as refugees and asylum seekers was also encouraged.

This was all continued under Blair to some extent, with opposition to his policies also blamed on the “middle class” as if a bunch of former lawyers who were now on over £100,000 a year ministerial and Prime ministerial salaries weren’t middle class.

Under Cameron we are back to all the divide and conquer tactics used under Thatcher.

Thatcher’s period as Prime Minister did more than anything to boost support for Scottish and Welsh devolution and for independence for Scotland - and this has been cemented by the continuation of many of her policies by her successors.

If Thatcher’s supporters don’t want her death and funeral politicised they should stop trying to use it to re-write history as party political propaganda

The Conservative party claim no-one should denigrate Thatcher’s record at this time. If they didn’t want her death and funeral politicised perhaps they shouldn’t have tried to use it for party political ends and to try to justify their current shameful policy of taking from the disabled, the poor and the unemployed to fund tax cuts for millionaires.

Given the Thatcherite establishment’s shameless rewriting of history, politicisation of her death and funeral and attempt to use it to gain votes, the political opponents of the government have no option but to respond in kind. Margaret Thatcher has thousands of admirers who are senior politicians, journalists and editors telling her version of history and the present. They won’t be allowed to stop the millions of people who oppose Thatcherism, and those who suffered under Thatcher and her legacy under her successors, telling the other side of the story.

(1) = BBC News 08 Apr 2013 ‘David Cameron: Baroness Thatcher 'saved our country'’, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-22068771

(2) = Telegraph.co.uk 15 Apr 2013 ‘Margaret Thatcher's funeral: it would be extraordinary not to spend so much, says No 10’,
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/margaret-thatcher/9994872/Margaret-Thatchers-funeral-it-would-be-extraordinary-not-to-spend-so-much-says-No-10.html

(3) = ITV news 16 Apr 2013 ‘Poll: 60% oppose taxpayer funding of Thatcher funeral’,
http://www.itv.com/news/update/2013-04-13/poll-60-oppose-taxpayer-funding-of-thatcher-funeral/

(4) = BBC News 02 Apr 2013 ‘George Osborne: Benefit critics talk 'ill-informed rubbish'’, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-21998784

(5) = Office for National Statistics 20 Mar 2013 ‘Labour Market Statistics, March 2013’,  http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/lms/labour-market-statistics/march-2013/statistical-bulletin.html

(6) = Office for National Statistics 20 Mar 2013 ‘Labour Market Statistics, March 2013 - Vacancies’, http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/lms/labour-market-statistics/march-2013/statistical-bulletin.html#tab-Vacancies

(7) = Guardian 15 Jan 2013 ‘Statistics cast doubt on coalition's '500,000 new jobs' claim’, http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2013/jan/15/statistics-doubt-coalition-500000-jobs

(8) = BBC News 03 Apr 2013 ‘George Osborne: Benefit critics talk 'ill-informed rubbish'’,
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-21998784

(9) = Guardian 22 Oct 2012 ‘Extra 10,000 working people a month reliant on housing benefit, says report’, http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/oct/22/working-people-housing-benefit-report

(10) = Guardian 01 Apr 2013 ‘The day Britain changes: welfare reforms and coalition cuts take effect’,  http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2013/mar/31/liberal-conservative-coalition-conservatives

 (11) = Ian Gilmour (1992) ‘Dancing with Dogma – Britain under Thatcherism’, Simon and Schuster, London, 1992, Chapter 4, pages 60 - 65

(12) = Observer 09 Oct 2011 ‘Big Bang's shockwaves left us with today's big bust’,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2011/oct/09/big-bang-1986-city-deregulation-boom-bust

(13) = Ha Joon Chang (2007) ‘Bad Samaritans’, Random House, London, 2008

(14) = Guardian 02 Dec 2011 ‘Big six energy firms face fresh accusations of profiteering’,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2011/dec/02/energy-firms-accusations-profiteering-electricity

(15) = Guardian 12 Apr 2013 ‘Big six energy firms accused of 'cold-blooded profiteering'’, http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2013/apr/12/big-six-energy-firms-accused-profiteering

(16) = BBC News 31 Dec 2010 ‘New Year Honours: Broughton and Carr business knights’, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-12093737

(17) = BBC News 15 Apr 2013 ‘Benefit cap 'will encourage people to work'’, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-22148764

(18) = BBC News 01 Jun 2005 ‘Secret Falklands fleet revealed’,
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4597581.stm

(19) = Freedman, Lawrence (2005) ‘Official History of the Falklands Campaign Volume 1’,
Routledge, 2005, chapters 8 – 9

(20) = Lenman, B. P. (1992) The Eclipse of Parliament: Appearance and Reality in British Politics since 1914 (London: Edward Arnold)

(21) = Campaign Against The Arms Trade ‘UK Arms Exports to Zimbabwe’ by Emily Mitchell, Section 3, Mugabe’s Zimbabwe , http://www.caat.org.uk/resources/countries/zimbabwe/ and
http://www.caat.org.uk/resources/countries/zimbabwe/#3

(22) = Programme Transcript – Panorama, "The Price of Silence" , RECORDED FROM TRANSMISSION: BBC 1-10 Mar 2002, http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/static/audio_video/programmes/panorama/transcripts/transcript_10_03_02.txt

(23) = Financial Times 29 Jul 1991 ‘Britain Exported Poisonous Gas Ingredients to Iraq’

(24) = Financial Times 30 Dec 2011 ‘UK secretly supplied Saddam’,
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/52add2c4-30b4-11e1-9436-00144feabdc0.html#axzz2QfcSoZKo

 (25) = Guardian 28 Feb 2003 ‘How £1bn was lost when Thatcher propped up Saddam’, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2003/feb/28/iraq.politics1

(26) = Guardian 13 Apr 2013 ‘Mark Thatcher's return to the spotlight’,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2013/apr/11/mark-thatcher

(27) = Guardian 28 May 2010 ‘Questions raised over Conservative party donations by businessmen's wives’, http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/may/28/donations-tory-wives-businessmen

(28) = Pilger , John (1998) Hidden Agendas Vintage , London , 1998, pages 33-34 , 260-261 of paperback edition

David Cameron's talk of Christian values is empty while he punishes the poorest and the majority while helping the wealthiest get wealthier

Prime Minister David Cameron’s talk of Christian values is empty coming from a man whose government is cutting benefits for the disabled and forced people into homelessness by increasing rents for people living in social housing  - including hundreds of thousands of disabled people - to 80% of market rates, while capping housing benefit (1) – (9).

While he claims ‘there is no money’ for the disabled or those he makes homelessness or  unemployed, he provides taxpayer subsidies to arms companies and won’t tax banks or hedge funds a penny more.

The government is paying BAE billions to build an aircraft carrier which will be left to rust; and billions more for another which will have just 6 aircraft by 2020. The National Audit Office found Cameron’s claim that it would be more expensive to cancel the contract was false (10) – (13).

Department for International Development Minister Andrew Mitchell told parliament that UK foreign aid to India is intended to secure trade deals with India including £6.6bn of  British fighter jets (14). There is money for the war in Afghanistan too and for new PFI contracts, which the Treasury Select Committee found cost taxpayers 70% more to repay per pound than funding by taxation or loans (15) – (16).

Cameron protects the City of London financial sector from new taxes and regulations (17). This includes stock market traders and hedge fund and bank managers who caused the financial crisis, on an average income of £100,000 per year including bonuses, who got a 12% pay increase in 6 months (18) – (19). At the same time he’s making hundreds of thousands of teachers, nurses, police and others unemployed (20).

Then, with six people unemployed for every job available, even on the government’s fiddled figures, his party labels them lazy scroungers (21) – (22).

His government cracks down hard on benefit fraud, which amounts to just £1.6 billion each year out of over £187 billion, with fraudulent claims made by just 0.6% of benefit claimants, often for very small amounts (The inaccurate £6 billion figure the government sometimes claims for benefit fraud actually includes mistakes made – many of them by Department of Work and Pensions staff, not claimants.) (23) – (24).

Meanwhile each year between £6.9 billion and £12.7 billion of benefits that people are entitled to go unpaid either because they are unclaimed or because staff wrongly or mistakenly refuse them to people entitled to them (25).

So at least 4 times as much money isn’t paid out in benefits to people entitled to them as is taken by fraud.

The UK National Fraud Authority’s reports show that the vast majority of fraud each year in the UK is tax fraud (around £15 billion a year) and private sector company and individual criminal fraud most of the rest (around £16 billion a year) (see page 7 of their annual report for 2011). So benefit fraud is peanuts by comparison (26).

At the same time Cameron allows tax havens in the Channel Islands and Belize to remain and lets the Inland revenue do sweetheart deals with big companies to get off with billions in taxes each year (27).

While it’s estimated at least 3,000 people will die of cold related illnesses this year in the UK  due to being unable to afford to heat their homes ; and with the proportion of households in fuel poverty having risen from a fifth to a quarter under the Coalition, Cameron’s government allows the big energy companies off with what a study by Manchester University found to be profiteering – raising their prices immediately by 80% of cost increases when their costs go up, but when costs fall cutting prices to consumers by only 50% of the fall in the wholesale costs of gas, coal and oil generated electricity (28) – (30).

As a result the gap between energy companies’ costs per unit of electricity or gas and their prices in the UK rose from £1.93 in 2004 to £4 in 2010. It’s since fallen due to media coverage – but is still much higher than in 2004 at £2.73 (31).

Yet no hint of capping energy profiteering coming from Cameron’s government.

In Cameron’s version of the Bible does Jesus invite the money-changers into the temple to discuss how they can work together to ring more money out of the poorest?

 (1) = guardian.co.uk 16 Dec 2011 ‘Cameron calls for return to Christian values as King James Bible turns 400’, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/dec/16/cameron-king-james-bible-anniversary

(2) = Guardian.co.uk 21 Oct 2011 ‘Disability groups fear further benefit cuts after miscalculation’, http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2011/oct/21/disability-groups-further-benefit-cuts

(3) = BBC 08 Jul 2011 ‘Affordable rent housing plans 'to hit London families'’,http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-14073437 ; ‘Families will struggle to afford multi-bedroom homes in London if government proposals for a new "affordable rent" tariff are introduced, a report by the London Assembly has said. Social housing tenants would be charged 80% of the market rent under the plans.But this is generally higher than the current level and may make payments tricky for families, the assembly's planning and housing committee said. And the proposed cap on benefits could make things even worse, it added. "In this example, new clients could therefore be facing rents that are higher by nearly 100% for a one-bedroom flat and over 300% for a four-bedroom property." This week the government said the changes to housing benefits were about "fairness" and were needed to reduce a bill "which has spiralled to £21bn a year under Labour". But Labour criticised the coalition after it emerged a senior civil servant had warned 20,000 people could be left homeless by the cap on benefits.’

(4) = Observer 21 Aug 2011 ‘Families 'will be priced out of social housing by plans for higher rents' - Proposed rent rises will be unaffordable across much of urban England, not just London, study warns’, http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2011/aug/21/families-priced-out-social-housing

(5) = BBC News 11 Mar 2011 ‘Housing benefit cut to hit 450,000 disabled people’, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-12714313 , ‘An assessment from the Department for Work and Pensions shows the change will leave 450,000 disabled people an average of £13 a week worse off.’

(6) = Scottish Government Communities Analytical Services January 2011 ‘Housing Benefit Changes : Scottish Impact Assessment’ (1^st draft version),http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=%22shelter%20scotland%22%20rent%2080%25%20market%20rates&source=web&cd=9&ved=0CFsQFjAI&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.scotland.gov.uk%2FResource%2FDoc%2F1125%2F0110252.doc&ei=a0KzTuzaN8OO8gO6p4jxBA&usg=AFQjCNGZf0X0ZRayjdogzPZqTzkV8I7JXA&cad=rja

(7) = Shelter (England) 12 Oct 2011 ‘Rent rises hit home’, http://england.shelter.org.uk/news/october_2011/rental_market_in_crisis

(8) = Shelter Scotland 21 Sep 2011 ‘50% Cut In Affordable Housing Budget As SNP Government’s Manifesto Pledge Turns to Rubble’, http://scotland.shelter.org.uk/media/press_releases/press_release_folder/2011/50_cut_in_affordable_housing_budget_as_snp_governments_manifesto_pledge_turns_to_rubble

(9) = BBC News 27 Oct 2010 ‘No change to housing benefit plan - Cameron’, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-11633163

(10) = Guardian 07 Jul 2011 ‘National Audit Office challenges £6bn project to build aircraft carriers’,http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/jul/07/nao-report-aircraft-carriers-navy

(11) = guardian.co.uk  11 Jul 2011 ‘David Cameron 'prevented independent watchdog seeing aircraft carrier papers'’,http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/jul/11/david-cameron-aircraft-carriers

(12) = Channel 4 News 07 Jul 2011 ‘Guardian 07 Jul 2011 ‘Full fact check : the real cost of cancelling aircraft carriers’http://blogs.channel4.com/factcheck/factcheck-the-real-cost-of-cancelling-aircraft-carriers/7210; ‘In 2007, the Labour government decided to build two 65,000-ton Queen Elizabeth-class aircraft carriers at an estimated cost of £3.65bn….But since then, costs have spiralled dramatically, with the projected outlay now thought to be £6.24bn for just one fully operational carrier, the Queen Elizabeth…..The second ship – the Prince of Wales – will be built, but left in a state of “extended readiness”, meaning that fighter planes won’t be able to launch from or land on its deck…..It gets worse: the NAOnow thinks the eventual bill for the programme “will significantly exceed £10 billion”.’

(13) = Guardian 29 Nov 2011 ‘MPs warn Royal Navy's carriers will be costly, late, and of limited use’, http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/nov/29/royal-navy-carriers-impaired-use-public-accounts-committee ; government admits one carrier to be mothballed on construction in 2016, one to have no planes on it till 2020, when it will have only 6, raised to 12 in 2023

(14) = Independent 17 Dec 2011 ‘Aid to India part of broad plan to build trade and investment, says minister ’, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/aid-to-india-part-of-broad-plan-to-build-trade-and-investment-says-minister-6278373.html , ‘The Government's controversial decision to continue giving money to India, a nation that has more billionaires than the UK and an aid programme of its own, is directly linked to developing trade and investment opportunities, a senior minister admitted yesterday.

In terms of perhaps surprising bluntness, international development minister Andrew Mitchell said the decision to spend £1.2bn over the next five years was part of a broader partnership that also included the hoped-for sale of fighter jets to India…. One potential deal officials are anxiously following is the sale of 126 fighter jets to Delhi. The EuroFighter Typhoon, made by a European consortium including Britain's BAE Systems, is one of two jets that have made the final shortlist in a deal worth an estimated £6.6bn.’

(15) = guardian.co.uk 19 Jul 2011 ‘300 schools to be built with £2bn PFI scheme’, http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2011/jul/19/300-schools-built-private-finance-scheme

(16) = BBC News ‘PFI projects 'poor value for money', say MPs’, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-14574059 ; ‘The Private Finance Initiative (PFI) used by successive governments to pay for new schools and hospitals is poor value for money, MPs have said. The Treasury select committee said PFI was no more efficient than other forms of borrowing and it was "illusory" that it shielded the taxpayer from risk. Government had become "addicted" to PFI, the committee's Tory chair said…. In a critical report, the cross-party Treasury select committee said the long-term expense of PFI deals - where the private sector shoulders the upfront cost and is typically repaid by the taxpayer over a 30-year period - were now much higher than more conventional forms of borrowing. Due to the financing costs involved, it said paying off a £1bn debt incurred through PFI cost the taxpayer equivalent to a direct government debt of £1.7bn.’

(17) = Guardian 07 Dec 2011 ‘David Cameron threatens veto if EU treaty fails to protect City of London’, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/dec/07/cameron-threatens-veto-eu-treaty

(18) = Astbury Marsden Compensation Survey 2011 – Banking Infrastructure London,http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:tN8-iJkGpa8J:www.astburymarsden.com/documents/Astbury%2520Marsden%2520Compensation%2520Survey%25202011_Banking%2520Infrastructure%2520London%2520small.pdf+Astbury+Marsden+report+city+pay&hl=en&gl=uk&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESjCp35WxasQC0uKU6hyPufcF3PKQgqywr0k1qNAEGK_4wMSeFBhohPhKrGo7oTiY4RLukF4E51KGYTxH6kmRfhX-1zs80hIKdv6Ckao6ZzZxFrjD6HI5anmt52lZR3QiNTc0ttx&sig=AHIEtbS9vlPCGJzgvi4HFde7s45wAlnw_w ; shows average salary for city of London financial sector is £83,000 with 12% increase in 6 months in 2011

(19) = Guardian 28 Nov 2011 ‘Banks under fresh pressure to curb bonus and dividend payouts’, http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2011/nov/28/banks-curb-bonuses-dividends ; ‘According to a survey by headhunters Astbury Marsden published on Monday, City professionals expect an average bonus of 24% of their basic pay for 2011, indicating a payout of £19,920 on an average salary of £83,000.’ (which brings their average annual income including bonuses to about £103,000)

(20) = guardian.co.uk 29 Nov 2011 ‘Cuts: an extra 300,000 public sector jobs now face the axe’, http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/patrick-butler-cuts-blog/2011/nov/29/300k-extra-public-sector-jobs-face-axe , ‘The Office for Budgetary Responsibility now reckons 710,000 public service jobs - not 410,000 - will go over the next five years.’

(21) = Office for National Statistics ‘Labour Market Statistics, November 2011’, http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/lms/labour-market-statistics/november-2011/index.html ; shows 2.62 million people unemployed in 3^rd quarter of 2011

(22) = Labour market statistics: 16 Nov 2011 – Vacancies - http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/lms/labour-market-statistics/november-2011/statistical-bulletin.html#tab-Vacancies ; shows 462,000 job vacancies in 3^rd quarter of 2011

(23) = Guardian  01 Feb 2011 ‘Benefit fraud: spies in the welfare war’,http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2011/feb/01/benefits-fraud-investigators ; ‘The Salvation Army and a number of other charities have written to the prime minister pointing out that the £5bn figure highlighted by the chancellor was "a threefold exaggeration of the true government estimate of benefit fraud". The frequently cited figure is achieved by adding the estimated amount of fraudulent claims (approximately £1.6bn) to the estimated total of claims made as a result of an error either by the claimant or the official handling their claim….There is an artful misrepresentation here; the suggestion is that the benefits bills is out of control because vast quantities of fraud is being committed by benefits claimants – so cutting the bill is just a question of tackling fraud. It is true that the benefits bill has grown rapidly, from £125bn in 1996/7 to £187bn in 2009/10, but this is not the result of increased fraud. The cost is higher because more people are (legitimately) claiming benefits and because an ageing population is making the cost of pensions soar. Less than 1% of people on benefits commit fraud, and those who do, campaigners argue, are often the poorest of the poor, and the sums involved very small.

(24) = Full Fact 01 Nov 2010 ‘Calls grow for George Osborne to correct the record’,http://fullfact.org/blog/calls_grow_for_george_osborne_to_correct_the_record-2364

(25) = Hansard House of Commons Written Answers 16 March 2011column 401w  ‘Social Security Benefits’ http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201011/cmhansrd/cm110316/text/110316w0004.htm#1103171000102 ; ‘Dr Whiteford: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions what estimate he has made of monetary value of unclaimed benefits in the latest period for which figures are available; and how much was unclaimed for each benefit and allowance type. [45049].Chris Grayling: For the six income-related benefits for which estimates are available there was between £6,930 million and £12,700 million left unclaimed in 2008-09’

(26) = National Fraud Authority Jan 2011 ‘Annual fraud indicator’,http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/publications/agencies-public-bodies/nfa/annual-fraud-indicator/annual-fraud-indicator-2011?view=Binary

(27) = Guardian 20 Dec 2011 ‘HMRC hid 'sweetheart' tax deals for big business, MPs say’, http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2011/dec/20/inland-revenue-sweetheart-tax-deals

(28) = guardian.co.uk 19 Oct 2011 ‘Fuel poverty 'will claim 2,700 victims this winter'’, http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2011/oct/19/fuel-poverty-2700-victims-winter ; figure is if only 10% of 27,000 cold related excess deaths in winter are due to fuel poverty ; figure is for England and Wales only so including Scotland , with Scotland having a population of 5.2 million and England and Wales 63 million, there will be 222 cold related deaths in Scotland this winter, which, added to the 2,700 in England and Wales comes to 2922 – roughly 3,000)

(29) = guardian.co.uk 01 Dec 2011 ‘Fuel poverty affects a quarter of UK's households as bills soar and pay freezes’, http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2011/dec/01/fuel-poverty-affects-quarter-households

(30) = guardian.co.uk 02 Dec 2011 ‘Big six energy firms face fresh accusations of profiteering’, http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2011/dec/02/energy-firms-accusations-profiteering-electricity

(31) = See (30) above