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 most unequal rich country in Northern Europe
Last month the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (the rich countries’ club) published In it Together: Why Less Inequality Benefits All. It develops the argument the OECD has been making for some time about the malign economic consequences of inequality, and presents evidence to…Read more…
More Right to Buy – what will go wrong
Right to Buy likely to go wrong Worryingly the Queen’s Speech confirms that there will be a bill to extend the Right to Buy to tenants in Housing Associations. The TUC opposes this measure on two grounds; that the funding model of housing associations would be seriously damaged by such a…Read more…
£12 billion of benefit cuts will do a lot of damage
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…
Wealth inequality is even more extreme than income inequality
Sometimes it can be hard to get a handle on just how important wealth is and the difference it makes to have a lot or a little. As union activists, we work for higher pay and those of us whose main political concern is poverty know that the lived reality of poverty is an inadequate…
The post…Read more…
Schools and teachers have to fill the holes in the welfare safety net
Last month, an overwhelming majority of the 2,000 members of the National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT) replying to a survey said that their schools were providing support for children from deprived backgrounds. The same proportion – 84 per cent – said that they were providing more of…Read more…
How many hours should parents be expected to work?
How many hours should parents be expected to work in order not to be poor? New research published last week by Child Poverty Action Group explores this tricky question. Round the clock: In work poverty and the ‘hours question’ recognises from the outset that there are multiple factors which shape…Read more…
Over a million visits to food banks
In the 2014-15 financial year, Trussel Trust foodbanks helped feed families over one million times. As Michael noted when he blogged about this last week, that figure only covers Trussel foodbanks. If you include the ventures run by churches, charities…Read more…
Will working families lose most again if the Conservatives cut £12bn from welfare?
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…
Saving Our Safety Net Fact of the Week: more and more workers need help with their rent
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…
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…
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…
Will extension of Right to Buy really lead to building of new homes?
The Conservatives have announced in their election manifesto that that they will extend Right to Buy (RTB) to all housing association tenants in England. We will extend the Right to Buy to tenants in Housing Associations to enable people to buy a house of their own… We will fund the…Read more…
Saving Our Safety Net Fact of the Week: local government cuts are hitting the poorest areas hardest
Back in 2010, the Spending Review announced that funding for local authorities, fire and police services would be cut by more than a quarter by April 2015. The same day, Eric Pickles wrote to local authority leaders, promising them Local finance reform…Read more…
Saving Our Safety Net Fact of the Week: Taxing disability benefits would hit hundreds of thousands of low-paid disabled workers
There’s something (horrible) for everyone in the list of possible benefit cuts leaked to the BBC last week. In this column I want to concentrate on the proposal that people would have to pay income tax on their disability benefits if their incomes including these benefits were over the minimum…Read more…
Benefit sanctions for low-paid workers
In January this year, in a move that received little media coverage at the time, this government introduced secondary legislation that would enable them to extend benefit sanctions to low paid workers who aren’t doing ‘enough’ to earn more money. Sanctions – the withholding of benefits – have been…Read more…
Benefit sanctions are unfair and hurt innocent vulnerable people
Days before the start of the election campaign, a Committee of MPs with a government majority has just published a report worrying that benefit sanctions “do not always” avoid causing severe hardship or hurting vulnerable people. This is an important point. As I’ve pointed out in previous posts,…Read more…
Saving Our Safety Net Fact of the Week: even small victories should be celebrated
Last year we began our Saving Our Safety Net campaign by focusing on the “Five Week Wait” for benefits. One of the policies that will force thousands of new claimants to spend weeks with no income is the introduction of seven “waiting days”, which were due to be brought in next month for Universal…Read more…
Where could £12billion of welfare cuts come from?
How could £12 billion of welfare cuts be achieved? We have previously looked at the sorts of changes that would be needed to raise the revenues the Chancellor has set out. These proposals make clear the enormity of changes being considered. For example (with all changes concerned with the position…Read more…
But what benefits are they planning to cut?
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…