CIVIL SERVICE COMPENSATION SCHEME (No. 2)

That this House is aware that the Coalition Government is currently seeking to impose a legislative cap on payments which can be made from the Civil Service Compensation Scheme beyond that agreed previously by both trades unions and the Government in office at that time, an agreement which was scheduled to deliver more that 500 million of savings within the first three years of its introduction and which would also have addressed issues of discrimination in the current scheme and provided additional protection for the lowest paid in the Civil Service; believes that such an agreement was fair to both civil servants and the taxpayer; and calls on the Government to abandon such plans and instead engage in open, unrestricted negotiations on the basis of that honourably agreed between parties in February this year.