Give us your suggestion - big or small - of where public money could be saved

Loudlass wants to put the minimum wage at £23.4k per year ... above the median salary of £21k per year.

I would expect to see most businesses outsource all jobs by xmas!

Stop paying child benefit to people whose children are not living in this country.
Stop waste in the public sector. I work in elections, and after every one, ALL the equipment is binned- scissors, pencils, rulers, blu-tac, sharpeners etc. Hundreds of each. This year, I 'liberated' lots, and distributed it to DD's school and Brownie pack.

I can understand that household income 'averages' £35-£37K - but without tax credits, even if I could work FT (which I can't for medical reasons), our combined household income before childcare would be £27K before tax. As I can only work (max) PT, our real-terms maximum household income would be £22K-ish before tax.

And the necessary household income to be above poverty level that is given on letters from the DWP to LP's/couples out of work does average out to a wage (if you got off your arse and went to work) of £12/hr, either individually or as a couple (if you are part of a couple). So basically the DWP is telling everyone unemployed that the poverty level is set at a point that 50% of people will never acheive through work alone. Now I see why Tax credits are such a necessity, and why so many layabouts people on the dole refuse to work at all!

Loudlass - you seem to have done a lot of sums.

Have you figured out how many businesses would fold or move abroad? How many cleaners, gardeners, childminders etc etc would simply become unaffordable?

stop people bringing their relatives (mainly mothers and MILs) over from another country so that they can then claim Carers Allowance for looking after them, and said mothers/MILS can claim Disability Living Allowance, without ever having contributed to the finances of the country in the first place.

Sorry but its a fact, see it loads in my job.

Sorry got the part time number wrong ... its even worse than you thought!

Full time average weekly wage: £488.7
Part time average weekly wage: £152.9

Full & PT average weekly wage: £397.3

So on £12/hour = £450/week you'd be earning way more than 50% of employees.

I think you're confusing necessary household income to be above poverty line with individual income. Note than while average annual income is around £25k (median £21k), household income averages closer to £35-£37k.

Wish my hospital would spend more on infection control - when I was in there with pneumonia in February, my bed on the ward had dried blood all down the side of it. .

OH and at earning £397 for a PT job in my area! If I worked 16 hrs a week, I'd earn so little I'd still be below the tax/NI threshold! In fact, I think I was in my last job where I worked 22.5hrs/week.

No, it would be higher than £6 an hour for two full time workers to allow for the fact that there would be full time childcare costs - which would bring it, admittedly, to maybe £9-£10 an hour needed. BUT not every family has the possibility of having two FT workers - those with disabled children, those with disabilities themselves, Lone Parents, all of those people would either need a minimum wage of £12 an hour, or some form of benefits that covers the shortfall.

If the minimum wage was brought up to £12.hr, it would also bring up the median weekly salary, and effectively everyone's salary. Minimum Wage at present is still under £6 an hour.

If you look at what the government says is the minimum required to live on, and add up every benefit that someone out of work gets, it equates to a (admittedly) household income of £12/hr WITHOUT any childcare costs to pay for.

So Basically the government is telling people who don't work that X amount is the minimum needed to live off, yet that X amount is only the wage that 50% of people will be earning more than? Does that mean that as far as the government are concerned, 50% of the working population would be living below the poverty level without additional benefits? SHIT that's a lot. I know our family is included in that, but FUCK something has gone wrong with wages somewhere if the government thinks that 50% of the working population will be below poverty level without TC's...

I wuld tackle the hysteria that has is "infection control" in hospitals. Not the hand washing/alcohol gel etc, but the wasteful way in which health professionals are expected to use equipment. A new disposable apron and pair of gloves every time you go near a patient - even if it is plumping their pillows. Metal equipment is no longer sterilised but just thrown away after a single use. We are wasting hundreds of thousands of pounds and much of it is entirely unnecessary for the protection of public health.

Grimma- the unions would never agree to that

Unfortunately true. Goes without saying my company wasn't unionised - hence it's still around and profitable 20 years later.

Would individuals in the public sector accept salary deferral if it meant their colleague not being made redundant?

Loudlass

I'm confused by your statement.
£12/hour x 37.5 hours = £450/week.

According to ONS, the median gross hourly earnings was £12.34 for full time workers in 2009. For full time workers median weekly salary in 2009 was £489 and for part time workers £397.

So you are implying that almost the necessary minimum wage /hour is almost the median wage/hour!

Are you sure you aren't confusing household income with individual income? This would mean for two working full time the necessary minimum wage would be closer to £6/hour.

TheCoalition - I understand that redundancy pay is less than keeping someone employed - but is it less than paying unemployment benefits for them for the time it takes them to find another job? I agree that management reward in the public sector should be tied more closely to performance - maybe they could start with the management of the CSA, as their performance is sadly lacking, to the point where there are vast sums of money being paid out in compensation for maladministration each financial year, yet the managers are still employed, and there are still plenty of LP's that don't get any maintenance because the CSA is so incompetent.

And if the CSA was made 'fit for purpose', it would dramatically lower the amount of benefits paid to LP's - thus saving money!

Redundancy pay is still less than keeping someone employed. You will have to cut frontline and management, and tie management reward more closely to performance. We need to decide what we want the state to do as it can't afford to do all the things it has been doing.

Who is "us"?
Have you okayed your research with MNHQ?

And £12 an hour isn't a figure I've plucked from nowhere - that would be the amount that would be needed to meet the governments' own statements on where the poverty level is, if you take someone on Income support, child tax credit, housing benefit and council tax benefit. If they worked a 37.5hr week (standard in our town, for most jobs) they would need £12/hr to get the same amount - which the government classes as the minimum needed to live off.

Also - if you want to cut the public sector, all well and good - but that means making however many people unemployed. Often in areas where there is no other real employment for these people. And who will be cut first? Frontline workers or management? Because if it's management, they would need larger amounts of redundancy pay (thus costing money not saving it). Redundancy pay would not be half as nuch for the frontline workers (if they get any at all) but then services would be affected.

Free prescriptions for children/OAP's - for OAP's is already means-tested. For children - well the reason free prescriptions for dc was brought in was because it prevented child mortality. Would you be prepared to see an increase in child mortality rates to save what would essentially be a drop in the ocean when it comes to the defecit? Say your child needed 4/5 different medications each month. Where would you draw the line and say - well you can afford to pay £38 (or more for severe disabilities/illnesses that require more meds) to keep your child alive? An income of £12k? £16k? £20K? £25K? £44K?

It's difficult because savings need to be made somewhere, but there will be someone in dire straits wherever the cuts are made. My main suggestion - raise minimum wage to £12 an hour, do away with Tax Credits completely. Saves a bloody bomb for everyone except employers/ businesses. Which is why it won't happen.

Loudlass - Tax avoidance is a perfectly legitimate and state approved activity that is used as a tool to encourage different behaviours. There is tax relief on ISA's to encourage people to save. There is lower CGT than on income to encourage people to invest in assets and businesses.

We need to overhaul the entire tax system, simplify it, to make it impossible to evade taxes and make the ways that tax incentives influence behaviour much more transparent.

Raising the tax threshold - all well and good, but could you feed a family and rent a house (not social housing, almost impossible to get in my town) on £12k - £16K pa? Even if you weren't paying any tax? The tax that is paid on a £16k income nowhere near makes up the full amount of benefits that someone on that wage receives to survive (what even the government decrees is necessary to survive at just above poverty level).

Whoever said about bus passes for the disabled - not everyone who gets a free bus pass on the basis of their disability is also entitled to DLA. I'm not. The reason I'm entitled to a bus pass is because by law I cannot hold a drivers license until/unless I am seizure free for a year. So it is to enable me to get around without bankrupting myself.

Charging disabled people/elderly 10p for a bus journey would be subjective - if it was down to the driver, most people with epilepsy or other 'hidden' disability wouldn't get the reduction in fare, only those with visible disabilities. If you had a card to prove your entitlement, well someone's got to administer that. If the bus comany was forced to only charge 10p, they wouldn't be able to take as many passengers, so would not cover their overheads, thus putting people out of work.

NOT everyone practices tax avoidance - I can't think of one example in my life where we tax avoid. We don't have an ISA, can't afford to pay into a pension, don't do work cash in hand, we don't donate to charities through gift aid (we do coffee and cake mornings and donate that way, in cash made). Why can Big businesses get away with not paying their taxes.

Overhaul the entire tax system, simplify it, make it impossible to avoid or evade taxes.

Silly things...

every month I get 2 newsletters from 2 councils! This is because we live right on the boundary. 1 council gets the postie to delivery it without postage/envelope. 1 council (who we pay our council tax to) send its every month in an envelope with postage paid.
I don't need it. Some people might need it, but I think everyone would understand why they weren't getting it.

Also over the last month I have had...6 copies of the same questionaire from the council. yes that's 6 copies, all printed, all sent using postage. All about the same thing...childcare in our borough.

I don't use childcare...its too expensive so I am a SAHM instead. I will not fill in the questionaire as I am unable to fill it in.

How many time is this sort of thing repeated over and over??

Grimma- the unions would never agree to that

Grimma - yes that would work. Got to sell it to the unions though. The point is that staff costs are by far the largest cost. So that's what you need to address.

Reduce the number of people employed by the public sector. Everything else is just pissing about at the margins

Or alternatively, do something like my company did in hard times in the early 90s.
We all had salary withheld: top bosses 25%, middle managers 15%, most of us 10%. I think they excluded the lowest paid. It was either this or massive layoffs or go to the wall.

The promise was we'd be repaid when the economy recovered - we were, a few years later.

'health ins in the U.S would cost my SIL $600 pcm if she could afford it. Which she can't.'

I was paying $365 for myself, for Kaiser, in the US about 10 years ago.

Apart from tinkering about with the way things are done, to achieve maximu efficiency, I can't think of any general areas in current public spending that would want to cut.

I think labour went mad with ridiculous levels of burocracy, and savings can be made, but in terms of public servoce, welfare, halth and education, it all seems valuable to me.

We don't even pay particularly high taxes, given the health and education provision.

health ins in the U.S would cost my SIL $600 pcm if she could afford it. Which she can't.