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…
£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…
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…