Nicola Smith

In June, £49.9 million was cut from the Working Neighbourhoods Fund, an area based grant paid to local authorities by the Department for Communities (CLG). The funding is intended to support attempts to tackle concentrations of worklessness in deprived areas.  The cut was accompanied by a removal of the ring-fence around the grant – and it appears that this has been used by several local authorities as an opportunity to cut even more money from this important initiative.

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Nicola Smith

Free fruit for children in Glasgow’s primary schools is reportedly at risk of being cut.

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Richard Exell

This weekend more stories have emerged about cuts in defence spending, featuring elements of the armed forces that are well-known to the public. Yesterday there were reports that the Ghurkha regiment is to be scrapped, today the newspapers featured reports that the Special Air Service is being forced to retire 40 of its most experienced soldiers and the Telegraph has revived a story about scrapping the Navy’s Harrier jump-jets.

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Richard Exell

Last night’s rumours that NHS Direct is to be abolished have been confirmed by the government. The service is to be replaced within 3 years by a national phone service (using the non emergency 1-1-1 number) based on the pilot project in the North East.

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Tim Page

‘Science cracks code to feed world’, says the headline on page three of The Times today. Now I know the first rule of journalism is that the headline should grab the reader’s attention, but even so, this is a bold claim. Nevertheless, this article reports that a team of British scientists have, for the first time, read the genetic code of wheat. This means that genes which control critical traits such as drought and salt tolerance, disease resistance and grain production can be identified. Across the world, wheat is a staple crop second in importance only to rice. This breakthrough will allow the development of hardier and higher yielding strains of wheat and so could lead to greater food security and lower prices. ‘Feed the World’, which those of us of a certain age remember as the Live Aid slogan, could be about to take on a whole new meaning.

So it is ironic that this article appears on the same day that leading scientists argue that planned cuts of 25% in their budget could lead to big cuts in the UK’s scientific research capacity.

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Owen Tudor

There is one implication of today’s immigration statistics that might see the TUC and the Government in agreement. The number of asylum applications in the second quarter of 2010 was down by nearly a third, from 6,110 in the same quarter of 2009 to 4,365. And the main reason was that the number of people from Zimbabwe applying for asylum fell from 1,560 between April and June 2009, to 405 in the second quarter of 2010.

Robert Mugabe’s ZANU regime was driving one person an hour to seek asylum in the UK – now it’s down to four or five people a day. The lesson which I suspect both the Government and the TUC would draw from this is that we need an active foreign and development policy that improves economic and political conditions in developing countries. A better Zimbabwe means fewer asylum seekers.

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• ARC-Defeating the Deficit
  ARC is the Association of Revenue and Collection. It's part of the civil service union, the FDA. They have launched a campaign to press the obvious point that reducing numbers at HMRC will lead to a fall in tax income.
• Andrew Mitchell soothes charities’ fears over planned DFID cuts
  NGOs have expressed serious concerns about reports suggesting DFID was dropping many of the commitments made by the previous Government. Secretary of State Andrew Mitchell has been working hard to dispel that suggestion.

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Nicola Smith

The Guardian are reporting that the UK’s main science bodies are facing cuts of around 25 per cent in funding, placing a number of high profile projects at risk.

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Nicola Smith

Arts organisations and festivals in Edinburgh are facing budget cuts of £2.5 million.

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Philip Pearson

Unintended consequences or not, Budget cuts for the very poorest will boost fuel poverty and undermine efforts to tackle climate change. Households in fuel poverty are already concentrated among exactly those families where the cuts will hit hardest. Worse, DWP Minister Steve Webb has not ruled out cuts in weekly Cold Weather payments this autumn. Media reports put Winter Fuel Allowance in the frame. Yet regressive Budgets sustain the high energy use of the most well off, widening the fuel divide between the poor and well-off.

The more unequal our society, the more remote are our CO2 reduction targets. Yet yesterday’s IFS report shows that the very poorest families with children lose more from the June Budget than any other group – facing a 5% cut in their total income. Yet the lowest third of households by income account for over 90% of those in fuel poverty in England. 

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