Jonathan Ellis
At the Refugee Council, an independent human rights charity, we support people who come to this country seeking asylum because it’s not safe for them to stay in their own country. They are forced to flee and come here for safety, for sanctuary, for protection.
Nicola Smith
In recent weeks there has been a lot of talk about means testing ‘middle class’ benefits as a means to reduce public spending without unfairly penalising those who are already the worst off. But, leaving aside the wider issues of who should be entitled to universal benefits in the first place (and whether support provided to median earners or, for example, tax relief provided to the top 1 per cent, should be the first focus of any drive to reduce the deficit) the importance of benefit take up rates is being missed – universal entitlements have been continually proven to be the best means to ensure that those in the greatest need can access them.
Nigel Stanley
We can’t complain about the amount of coverage for the TUC message on spending cuts in today’s media. There can be few that do not understand that we think that cuts in public spending would make the recession and unemployment worse.
But, perhaps inevitably, it has been reported as special pleading by public sector staff. Of course something like the ten per cent cut in spending or staff numbers that has been talked of in some circles would have a big effect on public sector jobs.
Adam Lent
I’ve just done a Sky News debate with Matthew Elliott of the Taxpayers’ Alliance. He suggested a new way of cutting public spending which breaches a whole new frontier in economic illiteracy (even for the TPA).
Owen Tudor
The TUC is supporting the publication of a new report, Your Money or Your Life, published this morning (Monday 14 September) by a coalition of 62 civil society organisations, which argues that the UK and other rich nations must do more to save the lives of mothers and their newborn babies. Next week, at the UN General Assembly, Gordon Brown and other world leaders will unveil new measures designed to protect maternal and newborn health – voluntary contributions added onto airline tickets (like carbon offsets); innovative financing mechanisms; and plain old extra money. What they are all intended to do, however, is abolish charges for health services for mums-to-be. Because what works in developing countries is what works here: health services free at the point of need are crucial to saving lives. If you want to join the campaign, use Oxfam’s online action to tell the Prime Minister you want more money devoted to free health services and more skilled health workers.
Nigel Stanley
The Institute of Directors was always the most Thatcherite of the employer organisations when there was a Conservative government. Under Sir George Cox in particular they tried to lose this image, particularly after Ruth Lea left.
But their new alliance with the TaxPayers’ Alliance, from whom they have recruited staff, suggests that they now want to perform the same role under a future Conservative government too.
Brendan Barber
A year ago the TUC warned in our economic statement for Congress that we were on the brink of a downturn. But we didn’t realise just how bad it would be.
It could of course have been even worse. If the banking system had been left to collapse then the results could have been catastrophic.
Today the TUC publishes a new economic statement. The economy is still in a very precarious position. Of course we welcome any sign of recovery, but much of what has been taken as evidence of recovery is the result of government and bank action.
Nigel Stanley
Other than attacks on public sector pensions, the commonest pension story in the media at the moment is news of employers closing defined benefit (DB) schemes to replace them with defined contribution (DC) schemes. (Briefly a DB scheme pays a pension based on your pay and years of service and is guaranteed by the employer, while a DC scheme is simply a savings pot with your pension depending on the contributions made and how well they are invested.)
This is undoubtedly a big story, but there is an even bigger one. I’ve been going through the ONS statistics in some detail and they show that as well as changing the type of pension on offer employers are still retreating from providing decent pensions at all.
Nigel Stanley
There’s been a lively debate over at Liberal Conspiracy on my post on public sector pensions. Many of the points are from the small-state right and entirely predictable and have been effectively rebutted already, but there have also been some others that deserve a fuller response than one can put in a comments thread.