Civil Service Pensioners Mugged by Maude and Hutton

I read in a Cabinet Office press release "the first 'John Lewis style' business created from a central government service", and ‘the first joint-venture mutual’ said the BBC. What is this new venture? It is MyCSP Ltd -short for My Civil Service Pension. Francis Maude, the Cabinet Office minister, hailed it as an alternative to the "binary choice" between state monopoly and privatisation, and as a "pathfinder" at the "cutting edge of public-service reform". The man who created panic over a potential fuel strike is now spreading panic through the Civil Service and its pensioners as he again mangles the language in privatising the Public Service Pension Scheme whilst telling the world he is creating a mutual. There are such things as financial mutuals, they have their own Association, it is a significant group of 57 member owned businesses managing assets of over £85billion. For the record it defines a financial mutual as “an organisation that supplies financial services products, and which is owned by its customers, or members.” Examples include NFU Mutual and Liverpool Victoria Friendly Society. The 1.5 million members of the Civil Service Pension Scheme have no role in the new organisation. So it is a simple test is MyCSP owned by its customer/members? NO! So it is NOT a financial mutual. Is it owned by its employees? The definition published by the Employee Ownership Association says that, “for an organisation to be classified as ‘employee owned’, employees must have ownership of more than 50 per cent of the organisation”. So a stake of half this means MyCSP is not employee owned either. What’s more a key co-operative principle is “voluntary and open membership”. In a survey conducted by the PCS Union of staff in MyCSP over half responded. 96% wanted to retain their civil service status in full and 94% were opposed to the government's view that the mutualisation would ‘empower employees and improve performance’, as Maude had claimed. What is more as the workers have been coerced into this new business it is in no sense a co-operative. So who are the real owners? Well it is to be 40% owned by the Equiniti Group and the Government are to retain a 35% stake which makes it look like another smelly PFI scheme. As a sop the people who work in the company are to get a 25% stake held in trust. But who are the Equiniti Group? The Chairman is, Kevin Beeston, ex Serco and the Chief Executive is, Wayne Story, ex Capita, not exactly famous for a commitment to workers co-operatives or mutuality. The new business is set to get the contract for the Civil Service Pensions for seven years then they will be out to tender for the business against other Pensions administration businesses. The Parliamentary All Party Group on Employee Ownership, produced a report called Sharing Ownership, The role of Employee Ownership in Public Service Delivery. They asked David Burbage, from the London Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead, if the mutualisation programme was viewed as “disguised privatisation” which could “swallow up” employee led mutuals. He responded that this was something that would have to be guarded against: “We don’t want to find we’re dealing with Serco in a different kind of deal”. Well that looks to me just what we have here. It is not as if we have not been here before when the Railways where privatised in 1993 the Corporate Pensions Department for the British Railways Board was also privatised as Pensions Management Ltd. Today it is called RPMI Ltd as they changed their name to attract non-railway clients. The scheme has been under continuous criticism from all of the rail unions. Despite a Commission on Railway Pensions the disagreements between workers and the scheme has continued. The current pensions dispute between ASLEF and East Midlands Trains which has led to this month’s strike action shows the importance to workers of their pensions. There is a case for both worker ownership and control and mutual financial services, they could have started for example with the bust Banks they had taken into public ownership, but the case of MyCSP is just Government spin. Just look who is to be the £1000 a day chairman of this new business according to James Lyons in the Daily Mirror who else but the architect of the work longer, pay more, get less, pension for public sector workers, the man who started the pensions assault in the first place, Lord John Hutton. What do the new quarter “owners” of MyCSP get? Well many will get the sack! Interviewed on the Civil Service Live Network the new CEO Phil Bartlett said when asked does the new business model mean staff numbers will fall said: “Yes. Overall when we start out, we’ll probably employ about 700 people in the public and private sectors running this. When we’ve re-tooled and opened up the new channels, then we’ll be smaller than that; probably half the size, maybe a bit less.” How long will it be in its present structure? “We want a mutual shareholding structure that provides good stability over time. But you never say never in these things. It will be the shareholders themselves that will take those decisions to change those arrangements in the future,” he says. Clearly the government could have prevented such a possibility by either making it a real mutual or giving the workers complete control. But they have done neither and this dreadful beast will do terrible damage to the image of employee ownership and the mutual sector by behaving like the private business it is.