It has raised concerns over children’s wellbeing, the pressure on staff from exam targets and a narrowing of the curriculum.

After a lively debate at the NUT annual national insurance uk
in Harrogate, North Yorkshire, members voted unanimously in favour of a boycott.

John Whearty, a secondary school teacher from Liverpool, said the maths and English tests, known as Sats, were “dangerous for our kids”.

The tests are about collecting useless data, which the government collects and uses to batter teachers John Whearty

He added: “It makes me feel quite rotten to be part of something that’s so obviously wrong.

“The tests are about collecting useless data, which the government collects and uses to batter teachers.

“These are false national council on compensation insurance
, used to determine how well staff are performing.

“The Sats have weighed heavily on us as teachers. It’s quite humiliating and it holds us back from other things we should be doing.”

‘Set up to fail’

After the motion was passed, delegates rose to their feet, repeatedly chanting: “No more Sats.”

The NUT, which has 250,000 members, will also circulate a national petition, calling on the Education Secretary, Charles Clarke, to end the tests.

It is planning to hold public meetings, national union insurance leaflets and approach other unions to join in the boycott.

Sats at age seven are only taken in England, and at age 11 in England and Wales.

Those for 14 year olds are taken in England, Wales and Northern Ireland and include testing on science.

Last year, the National insurance crime bureau
government failed to meet its target that 75% of 11 year olds in England should have reached the required standard in maths and 80% in English.

The NUT claims the pressure to perform in Sats is damaging some children’s mental health.

Marilyn Evans, a primary school teacher from Croydon, Surrey, said: “We should stop these Sats. Assessment should be continuous, not in this form. Sats set children up to fail.”

John Illingworth, former NUT president, added: “Our most obvious allies are parents. They understand the damage these tests do. We must work with them.”

In another debate, the NUT also voted unanimously to condemn the government’s handling of school finances.

This came after weeks of complaints that teachers would have to be made redundant because of miscalculations on government funding.

Some schools face six-figure budget deficits as a result of extra payments for pensions, National Insurance and other staffing changes.

A sum of 500m is unaccounted for. The government believes this is being withheld from schools by local authorities.

The authorities claim they have not received the money.

According to the NUT motion, the government has “grossly underestimated” the amount required to make the necessary improvements to education.

Bernie Ribeiro, the new president of the Royal College of Surgeons, said patients should be forced to pay part of the cost of treatment.

They would take out insurance to cover that, he told the Daily Telegraph.

But Unison, the UK’s largest health union, said the public was “rightly proud” of the existing NHS structure and would object to such changes.

The social insurance system suggested by Mr Ribeiro would be similar to those in France and Germany.

Means-tested

“We will have to look hard at an alternative system,” he told the Telegraph.

“If we are to provide healthcare free at the point of need all the time for patients, then I don’t think that’s achievable in the present structure.”

We could afford our workers to make an identifiable contribution towards healthcare Bernie Ribeiro Royal College of Surgeons president

Mr Ribeiro argued that the rising cost of technology and medical staff would make a tax-funded NHS unsustainable in the medium term.

He said: “The working population is reasonably well paid, we could afford our workers to make an identifiable contribution towards healthcare - not one hidden in national insurance and taxation.”

But national farmer union insurance would be means-tested, with the poorest people required to pay nothing at all, he said.

He said the government needed to make some tough choices about what should be available on the NHS.

“I would prefer to say we will give you the best emergency care possible, but you may not get all the elective work you want done on the state,” he said.

The government’s position was outlined by Chancellor Gordon Brown in 2002, who said a tax-funded NHS was “demonstrably the modern rational choice”.

“Unlike systems of charging, it does not charge people for the misfortune of being sick,” he said.

Public pride

Unison strongly criticised Mr Ribeiro’s ideas, saying one of the founding principles of the National Health Service - free treatment for all at point of delivery - should be maintained.

“The NHS is something the public is rightly proud of and I think any attempt to make people pay for their treatment would cause a public outcry,” a spokeswoman said.

Unison said the money the government had put into the NHS was starting to show improvements, and questioned the use of the private sector in the NHS - ” that money should be going into building up the NHS.”

If healthcare is not sustainable by tax, there’s no reason it would be sustainable by social insurance Nigel Edwards NHS National insurance

The NHS Confederation, which represents health service managers, said it was an “inescapable fact” that health costs across the world were rising faster than people’s national western life insurance company to pay.

Policy director Nigel Edwards: “If healthcare is not sustainable by tax, there’s no reason it would be sustainable by social insurance.

“The basis for social insurance is directly from people’s incomes and is usually compulsory - that sounds to me like a tax.”

Shadow health secretary Andrew Lansley said it was not necessary to abandon the concept of a tax-funded NHS, but reform was needed.

“The NHS requires not only taxpayers’ resources but also reforms that bring patient choice, GP fund holding and competition amongst healthcare providers.”

Liberal Democrat health spokeswoman Julia Goldsworthy said that while it was important to explore new methods of funding for the NHS, “we must ensure that healthcare is provided on the basis of need and not the ability to pay”.

David Neil, 66, his wife, Constance, 65, and their son, Jeffrey, 34, denied handling stolen goods at Newcastle Magistrates’ Court.

The Neils, from Stanley, County Durham, elected for a crown court trial.

They were arrested after attempting to sell the card on the internet auction site eBay.

They are accused of dishonestly handling the card between January 1997 and August 2006 after it had been allegedly stolen.

Magistrates adjourned the case for a committal hearing at the same court on 30 October.

All three were remanded on unconditional bail.

Princess Margaret, the younger sister of Queen Jackson national life insurance
II, died in February 2002, aged 71, after suffering a stroke and associated heart problems.

The ABI has made the suggestion in response to a major report published on Tuesday, 12 October, which showed that 12 million people are not saving enough for a pension.

ABI Head of Pension Policy Joanne Segars told BBC Radio 4’s Money Box that the importance of employers contributing to their pension scheme cannot be federated national insurance company, and said that even putting in 5% of pay can boost membership five-fold.

The ABI has proposed a tax rebate whereby if the employer puts a certain amount of money into staff pensions, and gets a certain amount of the workforce to join, then they would get back some of the National Insurance they had paid.

Incentives

It is a view supported by the National Association of Pension Funds (NAPF). Its Chief Executive Christine Farnish told the programme:

“We need ways that employers can be given incentives to put more into the pension pot.

“We are talking about re-jigging the entire system; putting the money that is currently spent by the state on, for example, 40% tax relief to high-earners and National Insurance rebates, and saying: can we spend the same amount of money in a more effective way?”

BBC RADIO 4′S MONEY BOX The programme was broadcast on Saturday, 16 October and was repeated on Sunday, 17 October at 2102 BST. Full programme information

Earlier, the chairman of the commission which had produced the shock report, Adair Turner, told the programme that if such changes did not work he would consider national life and accident insurance company
that we should all be forced to pay into a pension scheme when he published his second report in a year’s time:

“The thing we have to look at is whether the barriers to the present, voluntary system can be overcome. Can codes of conduct and automatic enrolment in pension schemes make employers provide schemes and encourage people to join them?

“At the end of the day we will have to make a judgement as to whether making the voluntary system better can have enough mileage, versus making it compulsory.”

Work for longer

Mr Turner warned that working longer had to form part of the solution:

“Average retirement ages should increase. One of the problems is that we have had increasing life expectancy and up to four years ago the average age of retirement was coming down.

“As life expectancy goes up further, at least some of that has to go into more years of work. It cannot all go into more years of retirement. The figures do not add up.”

But he said he might not recommend a change in the state pension age, something already ruled out by ministers:

This is the most complex state pension system anywhere in the world Adair Turner, Pensions Commission

“I think we will stick to features of the state pension system which are required to make the private system work. I am not at all sure that requires us to comment on the state pension itself.”

One of the things he will comment on though is the complexity of the state scheme. He told Money Box:

“We came to the conclusion that this is the most complex state pension system anywhere in the world.

That is a problem, because when people decide how much to save, they need to know how much they are going to get from the state, and it is difficult for people to understand that at the moment.”

Policy u-turn?

Major simplification is on the jackson national life insurance agenda too.

Speaking in the House of Commons hours after Adair Turner’s report was published, the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions Alan Johnson was asked by Liberal Democrat MP Steve Webb if he was “rather more positive about a pension based on residence rather than on contributions”.

Mr Johnson replied: “I have an absolutely open mind, veering towards being very positive about it. That is as much as I can say at the moment… The idea is really interesting and deserves much closer examination.”

This about-turn says means-testing has gone too far Richard Wilson, Help the Aged

His comments led many MPs to believe he was announcing a u-turn in government policy, and that interpretation was supported by Richard Wilson from Help the Aged.

He told the programme:

“This is highly significant. For the last seven years we have been told that means-testing is the only fair and sensible way to provide extra money for pensioners.

“Now this about-turn says means-testing has gone too far and we need a better state pension, a fairer state pension. That is a huge change for 11m pensioners.”

BBC Radio 4’s Money Box was broadcast on Saturday, 16 October, 2004 at 1204 BST.

The programme was repeated on Sunday, 17 October, at 2102 BST.