Richard Exell

Despite the difficult economic circumstances, the Chancellor managed to find resources for increased support for unemployed people and children in poverty. Nicola has written about the extension of the Future Jobs Fund beyond 2011, which is one of the best parts of the Budget and there are other valuable advances on the poverty agenda.

The Budget also announced that the minimum wage is going to rise by 2.2% in October, to £5.93 an hour; there were pressures for the N.M.W. to be frozen.

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Janet Williamson

There are two interesting corporate governance developments hidden in the detail of the budget report. Mandatory disclosure by institutional investors of how they cast their votes at company AGMs has been a long-standing TUC aim that we have campaigned for over many years. We have edged closer to achieving this today, as the budget report (chapter 3, page 40) says that the Government will consider using its power taken in the Companies Act 2006 to require public disclosure of voting records for institutional investors.

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Tim Page

I’m rather disappointed by the immediate reaction to the Budget from the CBI. They do seem to have missed the target again.

In his response, Richard Lambert, CBI Director General, has called this a “clever, political Budget”, expressed anxiety about the repaying of the deficit and welcomed support for business as “modest but helpful”. He then adds, intriguingly, “However, it is the fiscal decisions over the next twelve months that will really determine the UK’s economic future.”

Surely that’s too simplistic?

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Nicola Smith

Today’s announcement that the Young Person’s Guarantee will be extended to 2012, providing all young people unemployed and claiming benefits with access to a Future Jobs Fund job, training or work experience is fantastic news.

The Future Jobs Fund is the most progressive labour market programme for a generation. It has been a key recession response, addressing the economy’s current demand-side weaknesses in a way that training and other employability programmes cannot: making unemployed people more job-ready has little effect when there are insufficient jobs for them to move into. By guaranteeing real jobs, paid at least the minimum wage (which gives the experience credibility with employers, as well as reducing the risk that the most disadvantaged will simply drop out), the programme gives young people the best possible chance of moving into work as the recovery takes hold.

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Tim Page

In today’s Budget, the Government took a further step towards supporting strategic industrial sectors. Many of  those sectors will be ‘green’, both because there is a huge future in those sectors and because it is simply the right thing to do.

Central to this development is the £2bn Green Investment Bank, operating on a commercial basis  and involving public and private sector capital. The GIB’s mandate will be to invest in the low carbon sector, considering new energy and transport projects in particular, and focusing initially on offshore wind generation.

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Brendan Barber

Alistair Darling has delivered a measured Budget that took no risks with the recovery and showed that the Government’s handling of the recession is working.

Better than expected tax income and lower unemployment has given the Chancellor scope to extend the jobs guarantee for young people and provide some extra money for tackling poverty. Support for business, a green investment bank and for industrial policy are welcome steps in rebalancing the economy away from finance.

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Brendan Barber

My last minute plea to the politicians debating the Budget today is that if they call for cuts in spending they should spell out exactly what they mean and not hide behind phrases such as ‘efficiency savings’ and ‘protecting frontline services’.

Genuine efficiency savings should always be part of managing the public sector. But offering spending cuts and refusing to say what services will be cut gives efficiency a bad name.

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Nigel Stanley

After my last post on AXA, I’ve been looking at a press release they’ve issued, which you can see here.

It is even worse than you might expect.

It repeats the nonsense from the British- North America Committee that Straight Statistics described as “a statistical howler that would make an ‘O’ level student blush”.

And AXA Corporate Benefits’ Managing Director Paul McMahon compounds this with his personal plan for the future of public sector pensions:

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Nigel Stanley

I’ve got a guest post at Left Foot Forwards looking at today’s Daily Mail story on public sector pensions.

Over there I’ve concentrated on the pensions aspects, but I was also struck by this quote:

Paul McMahon, managing director of AXA Corporate Benefits, said: ‘Historically, the more generous nature of public sector pension schemes was put down to the fact that their salary levels were lower.

‘However, this is no longer the case, with the average salary in the public sector now exceeding the private sector.

This is not the case. Hourly median public sector wages are higher than in the private sector but have been since these statistics began in 1984.

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