Nicola Smith

Today’s Home Office consultation on the Government’s new drug strategy asks:

Should we be making more of the potential to use the benefit system to offer claimants a choice between: some form of financial benefit sanction, if they do not take action to address their drug or alcohol dependency;  or, additional support to take such steps, by tailoring the requirements placed upon them as a condition of benefit receipt to assist their recovery?

It’s interesting to remember that within days of entering Government the Coalition decided not to proceed with Labour pilots that would, in part, have followed this appoach. At the time, the Social Security Advisory Committee’s (SSAC) critical report was cited as the reason – as has been widely reported today, the committee concluded that:

There is little, if any, evidence that strong mandation will support problem drug users to succeed in treatment and move towards the labour market. It may, in fact, move people further from the labour market as they drop out of the benefits system and turn to other sources of income such as crime and prostitution.

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Philip Pearson

Inequality profoundly matters in our efforts to tackle climate change and prevent runaway global warming. Risks to climate change policies are inherent in the coalition’s unfair and regressive cuts programme - like Winter Fuel Payments - squeezing the poor while effectively allowing the rich to continue to produce much higher levels of emissions. The Spirit Level warns that “Governments may be unable to make big enough cuts in carbon emissions without also reducing inequality.”

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Nicola Smith

The Social Security Advisory Committee is running a consultation on a set of regulations that will amend the Work Capability Assessment, which is used to assess eligibility for Employment and Support Allowance (ESA). The consultation is set out in an extensive DWP Explanatory Memorandum, which has now been published on the SSAC website. This document includes a short discussion on the future shape of welfare to work services, which includes the following text (bold is my own):

we intend to build on the strengths of the personalised support delivered through JSA so that personal advisers can assess an individual’s need in order to provide enhanced support and low cost, flexible provision, to help improve employability.

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Nicola Smith

In a sign of job losses to come across the NHS, 500 posts are to be lost in North East over the next eight months.

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Richard Exell

If the government is indeed going to announce restrictions on ‘universal’ benefits it won’t come as a bolt out of the blue. The Budget froze Child Benefit for three years and the re-testing of Disability Living Allowance claims is supposed to cut back the number of people receiving the benefit by one fifth. The leaks about Winter Fuel Payments and Child Benefit would therefore represent a continuation of a policy trend that is already established.

How far will they go? The BBC reports a government spokesperson saying that the restrictions will fall short of means-testing benefits that are currently universal. But it’s hard to see how that will produce the savings needed:

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Nicola Smith

The last few days have seen both Conservative and Liberal Democrat Coalition partners emphasise their committment to improving social mobility. Of course this is a laudable aim – as Nick Clegg says, too many children’s life chances are determined at birth. However, it seems extremely unlikely that the Coalition’s policies are going to fix the problem that they are so keen to diagnose.

In a new TUC report, Richard has analysed the international evidence on social mobility. The findings are definitive: there is a very strong link between social mobility and equality. Any Government attempting to improve the opportunities of the poorest will first have to reduce the gap between rich and poor.

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Nicola Smith

The TUC’s 6th Labour Market Report provides an overview of the most recent labour market data. While falling unemployment and rising employment levels are good news, there are also a number of concerning signs about the future direction of the labour market recovery, with the rate at which unemployment is falling starting to slow, and under-employment remaining high.

Between April and June ILO unemployment was 2,457,000. While this was a fall of 49,000 on the quarter, the level only fell 12,000 on the previous month’s release (March – May) and unemployment by the ILO measure remains 841,000 higher than January 2008. 

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Nicola Smith

PCS have published an analysis of the impacts of the Coalition’s first 100 days on public sector jobs and services.

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Nicola Smith

Today we have published a list of 100 cuts that will cause real damage across society. Published on the 100 day anniversary of the Coalition Government, our analysis shows that far from reducing ‘waste‘ cuts are impacting on the vital services and support that the poorest families in the UK depend on. Cuts that are particularly unfair and regressive include:

• The Sure Start Maternity Grant (which is only available to the poorest families) for all children after a family’s first baby.
• Hundreds of playgrounds for children across the country.
• Domestic Violence Protection Orders, which aimed to support women at risk of violence.
• The extension of Free School Meals to low income working families.
• The Future Jobs Fund which could have provided real job opportunities for thousands more young people at risk of long-term unemployment.

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Richard Exell

In most parts of England and Wales young people’s A level results will be published tomorrow. Around the country they will be turning to their local Connexions service for advice; local news services are pointing teenagers with worse (or better) results than they expected to Connexions in Bakewell, Barrow, Bristol, Cambridgeshire, Gloucestershire, Haringey, Islington, Milton Keynes, Portsmouth and Wiltshire.

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