It’s getting harder and harder for low-paid workers and their families to find the money for the rent. Official figures published today show that rents charged by private landlords rose 2.1 per cent; wages on the other hand had risen just 1.7 per cent in the most recent figures. And wages have been…Read more…
Evidence shows legal aid reforms led to huge rise in self-representation and increased costs to the taxpayer
“The available evidence indicates that the proportion of litigants appearing before the civil and family courts without legal representation…has increased since the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 (LASPO) took many civil and private law children and family…Read more…
On present form, there’s another 7 years of cuts to come (unless sanity prevails)
Public sector net borrowing figures today showed borrowing of £87.3 billion in the financial year 2014-15. Undoubtedly the Treasury will be making hay of it being marginally lower than the OBR Budget 2015 forecast of £90.2 billion. But the big picture remains the scale of the shortfall against the…Read more…
Save migrants’ lives in the Med
The TUC has joined the international chorus calling for the European Union to restore the funding needed for initiatives like ‘Mare Nostrum’ to protect the lives of refugees and migrants attempting the dangerous Mediterranean crossing. Ahead of the emergency leaders’ summit today,…Read more…
mortgage approvals down 16 per cent on last year.
The Council of Mortgage Lenders have released figures for February 2015. Its bad news for would-be home-owners as the number of mortgages approved continues to decline (see CML chart below). The latest figure of 40,600 approvals is 1 per cent lower than January but a whopping 16 per cent lower…Read more…
1,084,604: Britain’s shameful new foodbank statistic mapped
Foodbanks were used to feed people more than one million times in the 2014-2015 financial year. This is the highest ever figure since records began. It’s an increase of 19% on the previous year. It’s a shocking figure, made all the more so when you realise that 400,000 of those…Read more…
“Whatever its make-up, the new government must reconsider the request by UK Coal for State Aid.”
“Whatever its make-up, the new government must reconsider the request by UK Coal for State Aid.” The NUM and its remaining 2,000 members are obviously aggrieved by the unfairness of the situation that the government has refused to invest in a future for the Deep Coal Mining Industry, even though…Read more…
An increasingly macroeconomic perspective on wages: The Resolution Foundation on the earnings crisis
Review of Securing a pay rise: the path back to shared wage growth, Edited by Gavin Kelly and Conor D’Arcy, The Resolution Foundation This collection of essays is a very valuable overview of progressive opinion on the earnings crisis, a must read for those engaged in any aspects of the debate. Some…Read more…
IMF/World Bank adopt ‘radical new approach’ to policy-making
The international financial institutions (the IMF and World Bank) held their Spring meetings in Washington DC last week – along with G20 Finance Ministers – showing that they have adopted a radical new approach to forming policy for the global economy. Unfortunately, that new approach…Read more…
Infrastructure spending: BBC and now FT coming out in favour – the politicians from the 3 main parties next?
The TUC has long championed increases in infrastructure spending, but the government has instead cut severely this vital expenditure. In an editorial in the weekend edition, the Financial Times took a big step in our direction. The shifting view was se…Read more…
Labour: 1m green jobs in climate change plan
At the heart of Labour’ Green Plan for the next parliament is a transformative industrial strategy to create a million high productivity green jobs through investment in renewable energy, home insulation retrofits, zero carbon homes, community energy projects, carbon capture & storage, new…Read more…
Conservative tax plans help the wealthiest most – but there is a fairer way
At the Conservative party conference last year David Cameron announced that a future Conservative government would seek to introduce two separate income tax cuts: an above inflation increase in the personal allowance and a rise in the higher rate thres…Read more…
Today’s labour market statistics: working people are still paying the price for austerity
Many have argued that employment gains somehow compensate for earnings losses, but this is false. My post on today’s labour market statistics is up at Left Foot Forward.
The post Today’s labour market statistics: working people are still paying the price for austerity appeared first…Read more…
Black workers facing the scourge of casualisation
The coalition government’s rhetoric on the need to reduce the financial deficit hid an agenda. This agenda aimed to reshape the economy through privatisation of public services and to destroy union organisation and hard won conditions. It aimed to enable private interests to exploit labour for even…Read more…
Saving Our Safety Net Fact of the Week: People in poverty deserve our respect
Today an independent group of nine women published Our Lives: challenging attitudes to poverty in 2015 – I’m one of them. Our report takes seriously the experiences of people dealing with poverty; we started with the stories told to us by people in poverty and built from that to wider…Read more…
#respect4managers – Debunking the myths about NHS managers
In the leadership debate two weeks ago, David Cameron described NHS managers as ‘bureaucrats with clipboards’. He boasted that he’d got rid of 20,000 such managers in England and that somehow this had created more jobs for doctors and nurses. Well yes, they got rid of the managers, in the most…Read more…
What polling on working time shows about attitudes to Europe
The High Pay Centre launched the findings of some interesting polling yesterday, showing that social measures like the Working Time Directive and restrictions on bankers’ bonuses introduced by the European Union were popular with British people, but not well-understood to originate in Europe….Read more…
Justice Committee Inquiry finds government reforms have reduced safety and performance of prisons
The Justice Committee recently concluded their first major inquiry on prisons planning and policies in this last parliament, focusing on measures the Ministry of Justice has used to reduce the ‘operational costs’ of the system. The inquiry report reveals the huge strain that the system is under, as…Read more…
“Standing for the common good”
At the Arcola theatre, Hackney, Natalie Bennett launched a Green party manifesto based on the wholesale rejection of austerity – “that no one in the world’s sixth richest economy should not be able to put food on their own table or have a roof over their head.” Bennett challenged the notion of an…Read more…
REC/KPMG ‘report on jobs’ shows anticipated pay growth in 2015 of just 1%
As befits the seeming ‘good-economic-news-only’ environment in the run up to the election, last Friday’s REC (The Recruitment & Employment Confederation) report on jobs was issued under the banner: “Stronger growth of staff placements in February” But in the last section of the…Read more…