Nearly 500,000 public sector jobs to be culled over the next four years

The coalition's austerity drive will get under way in earnest when the Chancellor unveils some of the biggest spending cuts ever attempted in the Western world.

George Osborne is expected to warn of a "hard road" ahead as he details £83 billion of reductions to tackle the deficit, which will see nearly 500,000 public sector jobs culled over the next four years.

Departments are facing budget cuts averaging 25% as part of the long-awaited Comprehensive Spending Review (CSR), with the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) and Department of Work and Pensions set to be among the hardest hit.

Unions reacted with fury after it emerged that more than 14,000 jobs could go at the MoJ alone, most of them front-line prison and probation workers. Legal aid and the courts are also expected to be targeted.

At the DWP, there is speculation that 'universal' handouts such as child benefit and winter fuel payments could be limited to save money, on top of a major crackdown on sickness and housing benefit.

The Secretary of State, Iain Duncan Smith, is believed to have promised big savings to get the Treasury to agree to fundamental reform of the welfare system in the longer term.

Ministers have also forced the BBC to take over funding the World Service, which was previously bankrolled by the Foreign Office. Together with a six-year freeze in the licence fee at £145.50, it means an effective 16% cut in the corporation's budget.

Commuters are braced for sharp rises in train fares as the Department for Transport withdraws rail subsidies, and thousands of police officers could go as the Home Office trims costs. Meanwhile, the social housing budget is likely to be more than halved to save billions of pounds.

The least affected is thought to be the Department for Education, which has secured an overall 5% reduction.

Even the NHS and Department for International Development, which are protected from the curbs, have been ordered to make sizeable efficiency savings to ensure that cash is not wasted.

By The Press Association

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Italy should have a serious debate on integration of immigrants leaving aside propaganda, Speaker of the Chamber of Deputies Gianfranco Fini has said.

Integration of immigrants is necessary, Mr. Fini said, but whoever enters Italy illegally must be expelled because he has violated the law.

“Integration should therefore concern foreigners born in Italy or holders of the Permit of Stay who have established roots in the country. Integration is the biggest cultural challenge facing our generation,” Mr. Fini said.

He admitted not knowing the right model of integration to be used in the country.

Balance between rights and duties is the only solution, Mr. Fini said, adding that “the problem is not diversity but prejudice against a person who is different from you, feeling superior to the person who is different from you.”

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"This review sets out a step change in the way we protect this country's security interests"

David Cameron has insisted the coalition is protecting Britain's future security as he confirmed deep cuts to the armed forces.

The Prime Minister said the Ministry of Defence's budget would fall 8% in real terms by 2015, with army numbers dropping 7,000 and navy 5,000 over the same period.

The Nimrod aircraft programme will be cancelled and there will be fewer frigates and destroyers - but two aircraft carriers will be built.

Unveiling the results of the strategic defence and security review, the Prime Minister said it was "not simply a cost saving exercise", even though money was tight.

"This review sets out a step change in the way we protect this country's security interests," he added.

The RAF will also shed 5,000 personnel by 2015, while 25,000 civilian staff will go from the MoD by the same time.

Mr Cameron attacked Labour for leaving a £38 billion funding gap in the MoD budget. But amid US concern over the depth of cuts to the military, he insisted the Government remained within the 2% of GDP target for Nato countries' investment in defence.

After the reductions, the UK would still have the fourth largest military in the world, Mr Cameron told the Commons.

"Britain has traditionally punched above its weight in the world and we should have no less ambition for our country in the years to come," he added.

Mr Cameron stressed that the cuts would not affect operations in Afghanistan, which are funded from the Treasury's special reserve rather than the MoD budget.

By The Press Association

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So many irregular immigrants who sought the help of intermediators in applying for regularisation last year will never be regularised.

In Milan and Rome where most applications were submitted, authorities are detecting serious problems with some applications. It is in fact now emerging that so many irregular immigrants were conned by intermediators who made them believe that they would help them find employers ready to regularise them.

Most of the intermediators were individuals from the same countries as their victims, service agencies and advocates (including those expelled from the professional body).

According to Naga Association of Milan, so many irregular immigrants in Milan paid an average of 5000 Euros to intermediators for applications for regularization which will never be accepted.
In Rome there are cases of people who paid up to 7,000 Euros. 

It is actually not easy to know the exact number of irregular immigrants who paid dearly in order to be regularized. Almost all irregular domestic workers who paid intermediators to help them find an employer to apply for their regularization, didn’t know who their “employer” was. Yet the fake employer declared that the domestic worker was living at his/her home.

Mr. Maurizio Improta of Rome’s Immigrations Office at the Prefecture told Il Messaggero newspaper that some of the intermediators used names of dead people, or casually picked up names from the yellow pages to submit fake applications.

They then used the receipt from the website of Ministry of Home Affairs to make their victims believe that they would be regularised before taking huge sums of money from them.

“Some of the receipts were authentic but some were fake, meaning that the applications were never submitted,” says Nadia Bovino of Nada’s Immigrations Department.

While there were fake employers who accepted money in order to submit applications for regularisation, many were victims of scam. Some employers who sought help from certain individuals in submitting applications for their workers later on discovered that other applications were submitted on their behalf without their knowledge.

They only discovered it when they received letters summoning them to report to the Immigrations Office at the Prefecture to complete the process of regularising the workers they didn’t know. That’s when many of them reported to the police, says Bovino.

Many of the applications submitted by these fake employers have either been rejected or will be rejected because some employers submitted more than the permitted number of applications.

Each family could only apply to regularize one housekeeper and at most two caregivers. But many of these fake employers submitted several applications. All the excess applications from each employer are being automatically rejected.

The fact that many irregular immigrants paid intermediators to help them find fake employers makes it difficult for them to either report the intermediators or recover their money. They in fact violated the law by paying people to make false declarations in order to regularise their stay in the country.

The question many are asking is, do these people have a chance of being regularised? “I don’t think so,” says Bovino. “Those who personally reported the intermediators to the police were given expulsion orders while those who sought help of advocates in reporting them have slim chances of obtaining the Permit of Stay for Justice. Yet, many advocates are encouraging them to do so hoping that they’ll be given the Permit of Stay for Justice, which they can later on convert into work permit, but the law doesn’t provide for this.”

By Elvio Pasca