All the union news that's fit to blog...
What will leaving the European Union mean for social security policy in the UK? In this post I’m going to explain why we should prepare for social security cuts as part of any move to introduce a new austerity. In a few days I hope to return to this subject and look at some of…
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Today the House of Lords debated regulations to cut tax credits, scheduled to be introduced next April. They voted to delay this introduction until an independent assessment of their likely impact has been carried out. In this post I want to look at wh…Read more…
You know you’re a nerd when you’ve got a favourite statistic but you only know you’re a geek when you can’t stop telling people about it. I’ve really got to write about The Effects of Taxes and Benefits on Household Income, even though it came out last week. I was away on the 29th (I…
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This week two announcements will be designed to set the government’s course for the next five years. It looks as though the definition of poverty and how it can be eliminated will be at the heart of this undertaking. On Saturday the TUC and the Child Poverty Action Group published a new report…Read more…
Well, after David Cameron prepared us for savage cuts to Child Tax Credit, lots of people expected that the government was going to change the Child Poverty Act substantially. After all, the last five years of cuts led the Institute for Fiscal Studies …Read more…
David Cameron’s speech yesterday ends a lot of speculation: the government seem determined to introduce substantial cuts in Child Tax Credit. The prospect of £12 billion of benefit and tax credit cuts is so horrific that many people refused to believe they were possible. Last month I explained why…Read more…
The new government starts work with commitments to benefit cuts that will be difficult to deliver but politically impossible to avoid. All the options open to the government will cause serious hardship but still won’t deliver the scale of savings the Chancellor wants. It’s very likely that one…Read more…
The Institute for Fiscal Studies is set to release analysis tomorrow looking at the £12bn of welfare cuts that the Conservatives are proposing. We know already who the favourite targets were for George Osborne, the Conservative Chancellor, and Iain Duncan Smith, the Conservative Work and Pensions…Read more…
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…
In his Budget Speech George Osborne repeated that he intends, if re-elected, to cut £12 billion in benefits (plans first announced in January of last year), but you’ll search the Budget documents in vain for any indication of just how he plans to go about this. These cuts have to be implemented,…Read more…
As we come up to the election, the government’s plans for benefit cuts are going to be a vital issue. The reality of this policy is that most of these cuts have hit families in working poverty, but the politics of this debate mean that the key issue is whether the government can persuade…Read more…
This is my last Fact of the Week until the New Year, and I want finish 2014 by thinking about the human costs of benefit cuts. The other facts have been the sort you can put a £ sign in front of or a % sign after, or which you measure in millions. Here I…Read more…