Richard Exell

Download the 7th TUC Labour Market Report

Today we publish our latest Labour Market Report, looking at the latest employment and unemployment figures. There’s some good news, including very strong employment growth and a significant fall in the number of redundancies. But there are worrying indicators as well. ‘Claimant count’ unemployment is up a little, so is unemployment among 18–24 year olds. There has been an increase short-term unemployment that could be a blip or could be the first sign of something worse.

Altogether, these figures suggest a labour market that has begun to reflect the GDP growth that has been taking place for several months, but not the self-sustaining growth that would alleviate worries about the impact of government cuts.

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Adam Lent

The news from Ireland just keeps getting worse.  It has just been announced that the Irish economy shrunk by a full 1.2% in the second quarter of this year.  All the things that very tough austerity was supposed to bring – market credibility, lower interest rates, economic growth – have proved illusory.  The UK’s position is not entirely the same as Ireland but it is striking that Osborne’s script is remarkably similar to Cowen’s (including heavy use of the trick of blaming our problems on the public sector).  Let’s hope it doesn’t result in the same implosion of financial credibility and stability.

PS. It is worth noting that the response of at least one influential policy maker to Ireland’s problems has been to say that austerity has not yet gone far enough.  Note to the UK’s future: never assume that abject failure will deter a deficit hawk!

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Owen Tudor

I’ve just arrived in Newark, New Jersey for the fourth GCAP Global Assembly, which brings together anti-poverty campaigners all over the world. My role is to represent those groups in the UK who campaign against global poverty (what used to be the Make Poverty History campaign). The big stories of the week so far are the new US policy on development and the launch of a new FTT initiative.

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• Now It’s Personal? The new landscape of welfare-to-work
  A new report from IPPR questions whether the government’s planned new “Work Programme” will go as far towards genuine decentralisation as is required (The TUC has a long-standing commitment to a localised and personalised approach to employment programmes).

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Richard Exell

A new report by London Councils (the umbrella body for local government in the capital) looks at the likely impact of the coalition’s planned cuts in Housing Benefit. The Impact of Housing Benefit Changes in London, based on a survey of landlords, shows that 82,000 London households could be made homeless.

The TUC has been warning since they were announced in the Budget that the government’s plans risk causing mass misery and homelessness and this report confirms it.

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Tim Page

The CBI has, today, downgraded its growth forecast for 2011, following measures announced in the emergency Budget to tackle the fiscal deficit. The employers lobby group believes that growth next year will reach 2.0%, rather than the 2.5% forecast in June.

I won’t get into commenting on the specific figures, as different forecasts suggest different things, but the argument that a deficit busting Budget will slow growth is one that few would argue with.

My quarrel with the CBI is more to do with the accompanying comment by its Director General, Richard Lambert.

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Owen Tudor

Vince Cable’s recent opposition to coalition policy on the migration cap is entirely in keeping with his economic and social liberalism. Although we would quarrel with the former, we agree with him in opposing the social illiberalism of the migration cap.

This is about more than migration, though. It’s about whether the coalition is truly Thatcherite – which is not mere terminology – if it is, it will split.

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• One in five councils illegally charge for reablement services
  A “Communuity Care” survey has found that 22% of councils charge for reablement services – which make it possible for people to stay out of hospital or residential care. This is despite guidance from the Department of Health that local authorities should not charge for ‘intermediate care’ and that doing so is possibly unlawful.
• Independent Living Fund to shut in government cuts
  “Community Care” reports that the Independent Living Fund is expected to close to new applicants and provision for the 21,000 existing beneficiaries will be ring-fenced and transferred to local authorities.
• Hundreds of desperate families in Scotland are living in fear of losing out on £61m of funding due to government cutbacks
  The Herald reports on Scottish disability groups’ concerns about the strong rumours that the Independent Living Fund is to be handed over to local authorities or the Department of Health and then closed down.

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Owen Tudor

Spain’s Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero is the latest world leader to join the campaign for a Robin Hood Tax. Speaking at the UN Millennium Development Goals summit on Monday, he backed the call made by French President Sarkozy (here in French) minutes earlier for a financial transactions tax.

With a further discussion on a possible EU FTT at the end of the month, that means that the governments of Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Greece and Spain are now firmly committed to an FTT.

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Philip Pearson

To Liverpool and the Lib Dems, where yet another leading figure in the Coalition was softening up his audience for cuts to green budgets.  Speaking at a Climate Clinic fringe meeting on Monday 20 September, Andrew George MP, Lib Dem backbench lead on the environment, referred to “big picture” realities at DECC. Half of its £3.2bn budget was untouchable expenditure on nuclear decommissioning. He warned us to expect savings of 25% to 40% from the non-nuclear half of DECC’s budget, the green bit. And last Thursday in the Commons DECC Energy Minister Charles Hendry repeated his reservations over DECC support for solar panel investment.

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