Sam Smethers

We share the Government’s vision for the Big Society. No honestly, we do.  Grandparents and the wider family are at the vanguard of that society.  So if we get it wrong for them, we’re in trouble and the Government’s flagship policy won’t get off the ground.

Despite recent progress such as the Grandparent NI Credit for the state pension, and a commitment from government of greater recognition for grandparent carers, those who are raising their grandchildren are set to be penalised by a toxic combination of welfare reforms and spending cuts. 

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Richard Exell

The Treasury has announced the creation of a new tax-free savings account for children, which will be owned by the children themselves but who will not be able to access it till they are 18. Financial Secretary Mark Hoban said

The introduction of this new account means that we can still offer people a clear way of saving for their children, while saving the half billion pounds a year that we currently spend on Child Trust Funds.

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• How welfare cuts hammer low paid workers | Don Paskini
  Don finds that the welfare cuts are worse for the low paid than the abolition of the 10p tax rate
• Automatic for the people | Henry Tapper’s Blog
  Henry spots some rubbish reporting on the autoenrolment review.
• Pensions review: no U-turn on Turner | Public Finance Blog
  Nigel has a post about the workplace pensions review on the Public Finance Blog
• A majority of voters think cuts go too far
  The New Statesman reports on two polls showing 58 per cent of voters saying that the spending review was unfair and 48 per cent thinking the cuts go too far. Both show opinion moving against the government since the summer.
• DWP: Total Place Data Release
  DWP have published detailed data on the funding they provide for employment programmes (like the New Deal and the Travel to Interview scheme) across the UK. We don't yet know how these figures will change as a result of the Spending Review, but today's data will allow us to keep track of how spending on employment programmes changes in future years.
• The FactCheck Blog – CutsCheck: balancing the council books
  Cuts Check reports that 46 per cent of councils are considering contracting more of their services to the private sector
• What the spending review welfare cuts mean for social care
  Gary Vaux highlights the increases in social care costs that are likely to result from the CSR's welfare cuts

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Nicola Smith

The poorest people in the UK are undoubtedly losers from last week’s CSR - those who depend on welfare payments will feel a drop in living standards as a result of the Chancellor’s cuts. But another group will also be affected – the private contractors the DWP is proposing to pay to deliver the Work Programme. 

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Nigel Stanley

It is hard to know  how to respond to the review of pensions auto-enrolment published today.

There are some sensible recommendations but two major setbacks - people starting a job will now have to wait three months before they are auto-enrolled into a pension and the threshold at which people are auto-enrolled will be increased by £2,000 so that in future it is linked to the income tax threshold.

So while on balance the review goes backwards, my overwhelming reaction is one of relief as it could have been so much worse.  Very strong campaigns were mounted both outside government and across Whitehall to gut the 2012 reform package (I explain the background here), and they have been beaten back. Many people deserve praise for that, including many of those who worked hard to achieve the consensus both in and outside of Whitehall and the pensions community.

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• Gender pay gap not expected to improve
  Alastair Hatchett at IDS predicts that "the outlook for closing the gender pay gap in the next few years also looks bleak because of the Government’s policy of freezing public sector pay."
• Problems remain for the government over pensions reform
  Nigel has a Left Foot Forward guest post on the challenge ahead of Steve Webb in reforming our state pensions.
• Cable is wrong: Working families will be worse off after tax credit changes
  Nicola's latest guest post at Left Foot Forward takes issue with Vince Cable's contention that the coalition is increasing tax credits for working families.

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Richard Exell

The Spending Review announced that the Department for Culture Media and Sport will reduce its funding for the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment (CABE) in 2011-12 and withdraw it after that. It was already widely understood that the Design Review process, where CABE gives advice on significant planning applications, was likely to be a victim of the cuts, but this decision goes further than many expected.

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Richard Exell

English Heritage, which runs hundreds of historic buildings and provides conservation grants for many more, faces a cut of 32%, significantly higher than the Department for Culture, Media and Sport’s overall figure of 25%.

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Nigel Stanley

I have a post over at Left Foot Forward on the leaks about Steve Webb’s plans for a universal citizen’s pension. This would be set above the means-testing level by combining current basic state pension and the variants of the state second pension.

That post explains how the current system works and sets out what I think will be examined in the forthcoming Green Paper in broad principle.

This could be a progressive idea but I identify two basic issues:

• who pays for it?
• how do you unwind contracting-out?

Here’s some more details on the costs.

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Richard Exell

I’m sorry, this is one of those depressing posts that everyone wants to rush past, but it really does have to be marked. In 2007, of 24 countries, the UK had the EU’s 9^th highest risk of poverty for people in employment, the 4^th highest risk for retired people and the second highest risk for unemployed people.

The figures come from a very useful new report on In-work Poverty in the EU from Eurostat (table 1). The table below shows the proportion of workers at risk of poverty in each EU member state. The UK’s figure is 8% – higher than most West European countries.

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