Michael Meacher MP

Hardly anyone has heard of the Beecroft report which went to Ministers several weeks ago, and that’s because it’s so rabidly right-wing that Cameron and Letwin refuse to disclose it.   Beecroft is a multi-millionaire private equity boss who was commissioned to examine easing the ‘burden’ of regulation on businesses – rather like  asking the wolf to decorate the sheep pen.   Leaks from his report indicate he is proposing the virtual phasing out of all employment rights, to the point where even someone who had worked for a company for 20-30 years would have no comeback if they were summarily sacked.   For Beecroft, labour is a mere commodity of production whose cost should be pared down to the irreducible minimum, and if the associated impedimenta of workplace rights can be stripped out, so much the better.   And now he’s proposing that over pensions too. (more…)