Budget Day Demonstration

The Battle for Bootle Campaign has called for a public demonstration on Wednesday 16 March, to coincide with the Chancellor delivering the Budget.

At its first planning meeting the campaign group, which was set up to oppose plans to close all of the local tax offices, voted in favour of the protest as a way to show the town’s opposition to plans which will cost hundreds of jobs locally and thousands nationally.

HM Revenue & Customs announced in November that all of its 170 offices nationwide would close by 2020, to be replaced by 13 regional centres. HMRC’s own figures estimate that 1 in 4 jobs will be lost in the North West alone.

The Department recently announced 153 compulsory redundancies ahead of the closures, and the PCS union says that there will be many more to come.

A spokesperson for the Battle for Bootle said: “For the past five years, the Budget has been little more than an excuse for the Chancellor to play up to a baying mob of Tories as he attacks the livelihoods of working class people and the services they depend on.

“The recent announcements from HMRC will not only cost jobs within the department, but within local areas like Bootle. Civil Service jobs were put here specifically to help regenerate the area and taking them out will cause more shops to shut and see the town run into the ground.

“This demonstration is just the beginning of our opposition to these plans, but it is important that everybody with a stake in the local area does their best to attend and show the government that we won’t take their attacks lying down.”