To mark international day of disabled people on 3 December, the TUC has published guidance for trade union representatives and disabled workers under the title “You don’t look disabled”. The individual case studies it presents show why it is needed. Much of the population assumes that disabled…Read more…
Are young people really just scroungers?
There is a growing rhetoric that young people are lazy, work-shy and have an astonishing sense of entitlement. Such smears have been stated by employers, have saturated the media and are echoed by eminent politicians. For example in 2014 David Cameron said: “I want us to end the idea that aged 18…Read more…
Just two cheers for the #spendingreview tax credit U-turn
The headline news in today’s Spending Review and Autumn Statement is the decision not to go ahead with the cuts to tax credits that were due to take place next April. So let’s remember the cuts that were due to come into effect next April, with no protection for the tax credit claimants who…Read more…
More funding for home-ownership but nothing for social housing #SpendingReview
The commitments on housing in the Chancellor’s autumn statement have now been “marked” by the TUC. The government is vulnerable on a number of aspects of their record in this key area and this was their chance to put it right. In practice, they probably scored 5 out of 10 at best….Read more…
Cuts have devastated services for women facing violence
The shortfall in funding is leading refuges to close their doors and turn women away.
The post Cuts have devastated services for women facing violence appeared first on ToUChstone blog.Read more…
The Six Week Wait – Already Causing Hardship
People getting the government’s new Universal Credit often have to wait six weeks for their first money and this is causing them problems with their bills, according to a new report. Some have had to turn to food banks. Waiting for Credit is a new report written by a group of 16…Read more…
2016 Tax credit cuts will worsen regional inequality
A new TUC analysis of the tax credit cuts the Chancellor plans for next April shows that the worst impact will be felt in the regions and nations of the UK that already have the lowest average incomes. In his summer Budget Mr Osborne announced that the…Read more…
The broken child poverty pledge
I have a post at politics.co.uk, (written on behalf of the End Child Poverty coalition) looking at the Welfare Reform and Work Bill – if passed, it will mean the government no longer has to report to Parliament on progress helping children out of poverty. This will mean that there will be no…Read more…
Today’s tax credit debate – what is the independent assessment going to reveal?
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…
Re-inventing the wheel of well-being: NEF’s new measures of ‘national success’
GDP was not originally devised (in the 1930s) as a barometer of economic health, more as a means to that end. Yet as we anticipate tomorrow’s first estimate for the third quarter of 2015, it is undeniable that GDP growth is now used as shorthand for the success or otherwise of the economy (and…Read more…
Trans issues: on our agenda
The new Women and Equalities Select Committee – a cross-party group of Members of Parliament – decided that its first action would be to hold an inquiry into the position of transgender people in the UK. The initial consultation period has just closed and the TUC made a submission (which you can…Read more…
No support for abolishing the Child Poverty Act
The government can’t be accused of pussy-footing about. In this Parliament we’ve already had the most radical Budget for 20 years, an attack on trade unions that out-Tebbits Norman Tebbit and cuts to tax credits that will force thousands of low-paid workers and their children into…Read more…
Counting the cost of the tax credit changes
In his speech the Chancellor said that “It’s because we’ve taken…difficult decisions….that Britain is able to afford a pay rise. Because let me be clear: Britain deserves a pay rise and Britain is getting a pay rise.” It sounds great but when you look at his plans it turns out that…Read more…
Where were the measures to address the continuing housing shortage?
Today the Chancellor made a number of announcements in relation to housing, primarily in relation to people claiming benefits for social housing. Young people in particular will suffer as the government are abolishing the automatic entitlement for youn…Read more…
I love redistribution
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…
The…Read more…
How to end poverty – trying the wrong way first
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…
Iain Duncan Smith tears up the Child Poverty Act – and tells us he’s going to “improve” it
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…
Child benefit under attack
In the past five years Child Benefit has been frozen, capped and taken away from better off families. Eroding Child Benefit, a new TUC report out today reveals that a couple with two children are already £5.95 a week worse off as a result and by the time of the next election that loss…Read more…
Pensions: one of the last legal hurdles for same-sex couples
Peter Armstrong-Luckhurst met his husband Kristofer in 1990. They entered a civil partnership in 2009 and converted to marriage on 19 December 2014. He worked as a doctor and contributed to the NHS pension scheme from 1978 until 1994. He also bought another four years worth of ‘pension…Read more…
Whose Pride is it anyway?
Trade unionists have promoted the rights of LGBT members for forty years. Trade unionists negotiated equal tights at work with employers long before it was a legal requirement. Trade unionists have organised solidarity with LGBT people at home and acro…Read more…