N e w s f r o m C a t a l y s t
7 J u n e 2 0 0 2
Included in this mailing:
1. TAXATION AND EQUALITY - post-budget debate at www.catalyst-trust.co.uk
2. COLLECTIVISM AND THE LABOUR MARKET - Lord McCarthy on the Employment Bill
3. THE NHS AFTER THE BUDGET - new White Paper and Adam Smith Institute reviewed
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1.
TAXATION AND EQUALITY
Dave Byrne and Ruth Levitas take forward the post-budget debate
Catalyst's recent assessment of Gordon Brown's 2002 Budget prompted a number of responses questioning whether the National Insurance increases it announced were really the fairest and most redistributive way of raising the extra money needed to rebuild our public services.
Today we publish commentaries on the issue from two senior academic sociologists: Dave Byrne, author of "Social Exclusion" (Open University Press, 1999), and Ruth Levitas, author of "The Inclusive Society? Social Exclusion and New Labour" (Macmillan, 1998).
"... the most affluent might have been taxed to raise on an annual basis nearly four times as much as Brown's proposed additional expenditure on health. I think the question anyone on the left in the UK today has to ask is why have they not been?"
- Dave Byrne
"... the rise in inequality between 1979 and 1997 wiped out all the gains of the previous 80 years ... If these huge cuts in taxation effected a redistribution of income to the richest, equivalently large changes will be needed to substantially reverse it."
- Ruth Levitas
The debate opens at http://www.catalyst-trust.co.uk/paper6a.html. Let us know your views - we will publish responses that we feel contribute to a better understanding of the issues.
Catalyst's original response to the Budget can be downloaded in full from http://www.catalyst-trust.co.uk/paper6.html
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2.
COLLECTIVISM AND THE LABOUR MARKET
Bill McCarthy responds to Mills and Mitchell
John Mills and Austin Mitchell's recent call for a return to collectivist values in Labour policy is taken up by Bill McCarthy, Labour's spokesman on employment in the House of Lords from 1979 to 1997 and an adviser to several past secretaries of state.
McCarthy argues that a change of direction is equally urgent in the area of rights at work, citing the restriction on access to employment tribunals in the government's current Employment Bill.
" ... Labour's agenda should aim to retrieve 'collectivist ground' in the labour market as well as in relation to public services, environmental degradation, poverty and economic performance. At the moment New Labour is dangerously hostile to such an advance; partly because it has fallen for CBI claptrap about the so called effects of employment protection on economic productivity and 'flexibility'..."
Lord McCarthy's comments can be read in full at http://www.catalyst-trust.co.uk/paper5b.html
You can now read an article by John Mills and Austin Mitchell setting out their case at http://www.catalyst-trust.co.uk/paper5a.html
"Back to the Future: Collectivism in the twenty-first century" is available for order from Central Books (020 8986 4854), price £5.
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3.
THE NHS AFTER THE BUDGET
Colin Leys assesses latest prescriptions
As the new money pours in Colin Leys examines the plans for set out in the government's new white paper, "Delivering the NHS Plan", alongside the latest offering from the Adam Smith Institute, "NHS Reform: Towards consensus?"
"... the real interest of the Adam Smith pamphlet is that its core idea, HMO-style insurance companies funded out of taxation (the premiums collected by the Inland Revenue), is actually not all that different from what New Labour policy is already producing ... "
Colin Leys's article can be read in full at http://www.catalyst-trust.co.uk/research1.html
Thanks to Red Pepper magazine (www.redpepper.org.uk) for allowing us to reproduce this article in revised form.
Colin Leys's new book "Market-Driven Politics: Neoliberal Democracy and the Public Interest" is published by Verso, price £16.
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T h e C a t a l y s t F o r u m
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