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Richard has a guest post at Left Foot Forward today, arguing that far from being a progressive step, means testing child benefit could hurt poorer families, and might not save as much as hoped.
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Also on Left Foot Forward, Howard Reed and Tim Horton have written on how the Lib Dems £10k tax threshold policy has changed in its adoption by the Conservatives, and how it’s now much less likely to help towards its stated objective of rebalancing the tax system to the poorest.
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Adam Lent
Does this tell us something about the priorities of the new Government? Since the recession began, the Minister for Employment has been invited to attend Cabinet. Interesting to note, therefore, that the Coalition seems to have no plans to continue this practice according to the list of Cabinet members published today. Maybe this will change later. I hope so – we still have a labour market in crisis as Cameron himself pointed out in his press conference with Nick Clegg.
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Owen Tudor
There is a great deal on Europe in the agreement reached by the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats, suggesting that Europe still has the power to work a toxic effect on the Tories. And what the coalition agreement says is pretty much a Conservative walkover. Joining the Euro in this Parliament is ruled out in the document not once, but twice. And most of the rest is about refusing to let more powers be transferred to Europe, although there is no reference to repatriation of powers, which may be the one bit of ‘old liberalism’ in the Europe section.
But there is a bizarre commitment to limit the application of the Working Time Directive in the UK, which is presumably mere window dressing – any reduction in what we have now (which is no more than the Directive demands) would almost certainly leave the Government open to infraction proceedings for failing to implement the Directive sufficiently. The only provision that exceeds the irreducible legal minimum is Labour’s extension of annual leave from the 4 weeks in the Directive to 5.6 weeks so that anyone who has to work bank holidays can take other days off in lieu. It would be illiberal in the extreme (and very unpopular with ordinary people) to take that extra annual leave away – so is that really what they mean?
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Too good not to share. San Francisco LGBT activist group Pride At Work staged this Lady Gaga inspired flashmob to support workers in dispute at the Westin St Francis Hotel, where a boycott has been called for the lucrative Pride week hotel trade. Sadly we’re not going to SF Pride, but if we did, we’d know now not to get caught in a bad hotel.
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Nigel Stanley
Much as it has been frustrating at times to keep out of the political events of the last few days and weeks, it’s not the TUC’s role to get involved in the detail of party politics (though we have been talking of little else in Congress House).
But as the coalition has now produced a policy statement – and we are a public policy blog – we are back in business. So I’m kicking off with a look at what they say on pensions.
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Brendan Barber
This new Government comes to power at a very difficult time for the economy. As today’s unemployment figures show, we’re still suffering from the effects of the deep recession. The recovery is fragile and the public finances gap needs to be closed.
An inconclusive election has certainly not provided a mandate for swingeing cuts in public services. Nor should new Ministers do anything that risks recovery, as that will play the major part in restoring public finances.
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Richard Exell
One of the more interesting discussions about employment in the recession has come from Richard Lambert, the Director General of the employers’ organisation, the Confederation of British Industry. It is an important contribution to the discussion about why unemployment has not risen as much as might have been expected in this recession.
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John Monks
The intervention of the IMF in the British economy in 1976 cast a long shadow over the economic competence of Labour Governments. It was a time of national humiliation, a time that was not easily forgotten, and a time which dogged the Labour Party for over 20 years. I was in Athens last Wednesday (5 May) to join the Greek unions in protests against the EU/IMF/Greek Government deal. The sense of national humiliation was everywhere, producing tensions on the streets.
The tragic deaths of three people after a firebomb was thrown into a bank were the work of an idiotic individual but other petrol bombs were tossed around and the risks of a serious incident were high. The incident overshadowed the large, peaceful demonstrations which also took place and in which I took part. The Greek unions are to demonstrate again to express their abhorrence at the deaths.
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Owen Tudor
The crisis facing Greece is likely to spread, so it’s in everyone’s interests to follow this unfolding tragedy. The TUC supports our colleagues in the Greek trade union movement, and the statements of the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) – and needless to say, we condemn the actions which led to the deaths of three people in a Greek bank last week. But the debate in Germany is a lot more concrete than in the UK because they’re part of the Eurozone, so it’s interesting to note that the debate in the German Parliament went far further than discussing sovereign debt and cuts in public services. The opposition social democrats (SPD, sister party of the UK Labour Party) abstained on the rescue package that Chancellor Angela Merkel proposed, because it didn’t include a financial transactions tax.
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Terrific advocacy of an active industrial policy on Comment is Free from Ha-Joon Chang, Reader in Political Economy of Development at the University of Cambridge.
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