Nicola Smith
Defra has announced that a range of arms length organisations it funds will now cease to exist – including the Agricultural Wages Boards, which fix minimum wages for agricultural workers and regulate terms and conditions in the industry.
Nicola Smith
The Department for Energy and Climate Change (DECC) has published further details on how its budget will be cut, in response to the Treasury’s £6.2 billion of in-year spending reductions.
Nicola Smith
Across the country local capital projects are being put on hold as a result of spending cuts.
Richard Exell
Oxfordshire County Council’s cabinet has voted to cut £600,000 from their road safety budget, which will lead to the country having no road safety cameras from next month.
Richard Exell
This afternoon Eric Pickles announced the abolition of the Government Offices for the Regions.
Here are some videos of yesterday’s Cuts Briefing event, “Did the Budget pass the fairness test?”. We’ve got the opening presentations by Tim Horton of the Fabian Society, showing how the brunt of the losses are borne across the UK’s income groups, Professor Ruth Lister on the impact on women and families, and Richard Capie of the Chartered Institute of Housing on the likley implications for housing.
Nicola Smith
At last night’s City Council Meeting in Liverpool, the Cabinet member for Employment and Skills was asked to confirm how many construction jobs could be lost if Wave 6 of the the area’s Building School’s for the Future programme were to be completely cut.
Richard Exell
We had a fascinating briefing here at Congress House yesterday, an opportunity to hear about the impact of the Budget on the poorest people.
I thought it made a very strong case that the Budget measures will have a very unfair impact on poverty and inequality.
Nigel Stanley
There’s a terrific piece by Robert Skidelsky What do deficit slashers wear under their hair shirts? on Comment is Free.
Back to Keynes!
Richard Exell
Today we have published our latest Labour Market Report, which takes a brief look at the most recent employment data. Unemployment using the International Labour Organisation definition is down 4,000 from last month and the ‘claimant count’ fell 20,800 – this measure has fallen in eight of the last ten months.
There was some more good news in the employment figure, which was 119,000 higher than last month’s figure and 160,000 higher than the figure for the last quarter. The month-on-month change is biggest increase since records began in 1971, the quarter-on-quarter increase the biggest since 2006.
