Nicola Smith
I have a post up at Left Foot Forward examining the Government’s assessment that Universal Credit will lift 350,000 children out of poverty. This may well be true, but the claim fails to recognise that the Government’s programme of welfare cuts will lead to at least the same number again moving into poverty before Universal Credit takes affect.
Owen Tudor
Last week’s immigration news was the announcement of the plan to turn this year’s temporary cap on non-EU worker immigration into a permanent one by the end of March (through secondary legislation, but it will still be a bit of a rush). Theresa May gave the business community a lot of what it wanted, broadly maintaining the number of migrants coming in under Tier 2 (people who already have skilled jobs to go to) at 20,700 a year and abandoning any plans to cap those coming in under Intra-Company Transfers (ICTs), where companies’ existing employees in other countries are allowed to come to the UK temporarily. Instead, the cuts will be borne by Tier 1, highly skilled people coming to the UK to look for work. And the super-rich will be allowed to continue to come here unchallenged (strange, isn’t it, that bankers keep coming even though they claim that taxes are such a disincentive?) The only crumb of comfort for those who want to ensure that migration doesn’t undercut existing terms and conditions – leading to lower wages all round and an increase in community tension - is that the rules on what you can pay someone coming in under ICTs will be tightened to raise the minimum wage levels and the skill bar. The TUC remains concerned that the rules on ICTs are too loose and that there is widespread abuse: why else would so many IT graduates be unemployed while so many ICTs are in precisely that sector?
Nigel Stanley
I’m a little bemused by the fashion for community organisers among both the Conservative and Labour Parties.
That’s not because I’m against community organisers. Indeed I would argue that this is what good trade unionists do – most workplaces are in some sense communities and union reps are often active in much wider ways within their local communities.
What worries me is the idea that community organisers can have an agenda that is something other than accountability to their communities. If they are sponsored by the state or political parties then that introduces all kinds of complications.
Nicola Smith
More details are emerging from the Welfare Reform Bill: althought the Government has publicly stated that it plans to require lone parents with children aged 5 and over to look for work, the Bill contains measures which will place conditionality (conditions which are attached to a claimant’s entitlement to benefit) on parents with children aged one or more.
This development was first announced by the Secretary of State at the end of last year, when he stated that:
People who are looking after children that are over one year old and under five will be expected to be keeping in touch with the jobs market; they will be expected therefore to stay in touch with jobcentres, to come in every now and then to discuss with them what will happen once their child goes to school and how they can make that happen. We expect co-operation on that.
What is being proposed by the Bill appears to be a little more extensive than this statement suggests:
Alice Hood
Writing in the Telegraph today, the Prime Minister signals more clearly than ever the Government’s determination to dismantle the public sector by opening up all our public services to private contractors and voluntary organisations. The prospect of the privatisation of health, education, libraries, parks, social care and much more will be set out in an ‘Open public services’ White Paper in the next two weeks – although of course it will be framed in the softer language of the Big Society.
Nicola Smith
Today’s labour market report shows how concerning the state of the labour market is. The most recent labour market data cover the last quarter of 2010 (October – December) and show that employment levels remain low, unemployment is still high and that economic inactivity has sharply increased. In addition, inflation is rising far faster than wages, meaning that those in work are also experiencing significant pressure on their living standards.
Ben Moxham
I’ve just posted a blog on the Center for American Progress’ website about what the upcoming UN Framework and Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights might mean for workers globally.
The Framework, drafted by UN Special Representative John Ruggie proposes a profoundly simple idea: that businesses should be responsible for their human rights impacts wherever they occur. For the world of work, this means that a company must stop its negative impact on workers, regardless of whether or not they are directly employed by it. To rip off my own words, it can begin to tackle a massive global problem:
Scarlet Harris
Liverpool Council has announced 100% funding cuts to Rape Crisis. Liverpool Rape Crisis helped 522 women last year with a meagre £60,000 funding from Liverpool City Council.
To put this in perspective, the public funding received by Liverpool Rape Crisis in 2010 was less than the cost to the state of just one single rape. According to the Women’s Resource Centre, the estimated cost to the state of one rape is £73,487 – £13,487 more than the annual funding for the Liverpool Rape Crisis centre.
Richard Exell
The Sunday Telegraph reports that Prime Minister and Chancellor are giving some thought to the future of the army once it has withdrawn from Afghanistan (due in 2015). Their aim is to cut the army’s strength by 20 per cent – at 80,000, it would then be the smallest British army since the reign of George IV.
Richard Exell
The Observer and the Mirror report that the Ministry of Justice has gone back on a cross-party commitment to extend compensation for victims of terrorism to people who were injured by attacks in other countries. The Criminal Injuries Compensation Scheme does not cover terrorist acts outside the UK and travel insurance often excludes terrorism. The Labour government planned – with support from the then Opposition – a new Victims of Overseas Terrorism Compensation Scheme. But now it seems that the plans are disappearing into a ‘review’ of victims’ services, with a Ministry of Justice spokesperson saying that support should be limited to “the most serious, most vulnerable and most persistently targeted victims.”
