Brendan Barber

Tomorrow the Government will announce unprecedented cuts in public spending – deeper than any of us can remember. They will bite deep into our social fabric – and hit some of the poorest and most vulnerable members of our society.

They want us to believe that they have no choice and that this is economic necessity. Yet economic experts across the spectrum warn us that the cuts are too deep and too rapid. The warnings come from the White House, the US Treasury department, Nobel prize winners like Paul Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz, key members of the Bank of England monetary policy committee, the chief economics commentator on the Financial Times, and yes, even the Mayor of London.

At worst the cuts will plunge us back into recession. And at best they will condemn us to lost years of high unemployment and growth so weak that the deficit may well stay high.

This is not economic necessity, but a political choice. Bad economics is serving a political project that has never been put to the British people at an election.

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Adam Lent

Download the 3rd Economic Report

The TUC’s latest Economic Report contains the usual round-up of the latest data plus a detailed briefing on public deficits, debt and what the cuts could mean for individual departments and welfare.

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Richard Exell

Yesterday’s Poverty Conference was a great curtain raiser for the campaign to defend the poorest families from cuts in benefits and services. We had over 100 people staying on right to the end of the conference and a really well-informed debate. There were great contributions from Kate Green MP, Jonathan Portes (Cabinet Office), Mo Roberts (ATD) and Mark Serwotka (PCS), but for me the highlight was the speech by TUC Deputy General Secretary Frances O’Grady.

Frances linked the threats to jobs to the services that are going to be lost and the benefits that are being cut. As she said,

As trade unionists and as campaigners, it’s our responsibility to ensure that the voice of the poor and the vulnerable is also heard.

There’s a transcript of her speech on the TUC website, it’s well worth reading.

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• Age UK joins the blogosphere
  A big welcome to Age UK's new pilot policy blog, launched in part to contribute to discussion of the Comprehensive Spending Review and the fallout from its expected cuts, as they impact on the lives of older people.

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Nigel Stanley

In today’s Daily Telegraph 35 business leaders sign a letter backing the cuts.

We’ve done some quick digging around and so far we have got their total annual salary up to £14.6 m a year, though there are still some gaps.

I don’t think they are going to be hurt very much by the cuts. Tax would perhaps be another thing.

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Mike Farley

Imagine the outcry if Wednesday’s Comprehensive Spending Review somehow led to the cancellation of support for renewable power generation through the Renewables Obligation. Yet some press reports have said that the CSR may lead to the four Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) projects which are part of the Coalition agreement to be delayed.

Applying CCS to both coal and gas power plants is essential alongside renewables and new civil nuclear power if we are to meet our climate targets and show other countries how they can, too. It has been estimated that it would cost 70% more to meet emissions reduction targets without CCS.

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Owen Tudor

Rich Trumka, President of the AFL-CIO, the equivalent of the TUC, has told the Financial Times that the Democrats can win the Congressional mid-term elections if they respond to workers’ needs by emphasising job creation ahead of deficit cuts.

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Richard Exell

“The key message is that poverty reduction appears to have stalled.”

If the new government is serious about wanting to improve on the last government’s performance on child poverty they should pay attention to the Millennium Cohort Study. This is one of the most exciting projects is modern social studies; run by the Centre for Longitudinal Studies at the Institute of Education, it is tracking children born in 2000 through to adulthood. Results from the fourth survey of these children has just been published as A User’s Guide to Initial Findings and the findings show that poverty is a reality for millions of British children.

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Richard Exell

Rumours that thousands of disabled Remploy workers face redundancy have been getting stronger ever since Francis Maude’s quango hit list revealed that the future of the public corporation was still “under consideration”. More than 3,000 disabled people work at Remploy’s 54 factories, located all over the country, and the Daily Telegraph reports that “many of the factories will be earmarked for closure as part of next week’s spending review” but that the company’s employment service, which supports thousands of people into open employment will be saved.

At the moment, the Telegraph is the only newspaper reporting this as a fact, but worried local and regional papers are running stories in many of the towns and cities that have Remploy factories:

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Dann Kenningham

The annual TUC Poverty Conference is being held on Monday 18 October. In the past it has looked at the issues of reform of the welfare state and the negative attitudes towards those in poverty, and this year will be focusing on the cuts and their effects.

The conference aims to “challenge poverty in changing times”; an aim that highlights the words that underpin the United Nations-recognised International Day for the Eradication of Poverty held on 17 October every year:

“Wherever men and women are condemned to live in extreme poverty, human rights are violated. To come together to ensure these rights be respected is our solemn duty.”

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