Anjum Klair
Last Sunday that Observer reported that councils across England, Wales and Scotland are preparing to bring their axe down lollipop patrol services. Yesterday, Dorset County Council announced it will continue with its consultation on proposals to make 500 public sector job cuts – among them every one of the 85 men and women who make up the county’s school crossing patrols.
The result will be more fatalities on our roads
Anjum Klair
Last week we reported on Manchester City Council’s proposed budget cuts – and now Birmingham’s announcement is the latest in a series of cuts announced by Local Authorities.
The UK’s biggest Local Authority plans to cut more than 7,000 jobs as it faces what it called a “gargantuan challenge” to cut £300m from its spending over the next three years. Birmingham City Council said a total of 4,300 posts would be cut from its 19,00o strong workfce and 3,000 more would be transferred out of the Council into a schools co-operative.
Richard Exell
One part of the Welfare Reform Bill wasn’t so widely trailed in advance: the abolition of the discretionary* Social Fund. Community Care Grants and most Crisis Loans will be “localised” and their future looks uncertain.
Community Care Grants provide support for people on low incomes facing exceptional problems or who need help to live independently in the community, such as people moving out of residential care. Budgeting Loans help people who can’t afford important one-off costs like clothing or a fridge. Crisis Loans help people deal with an emergency or disaster – like families whose house has burned down. They are also used to help people who haven’t any money at all and are waiting for their benefits – sometimes called ‘alignment loans’.
Clause 69 of the Bill says that all three are going to be abolished.
Richard Exell
Got it wrong on your claim form?
That’ll be £50 please.
The Welfare Reform Bill will introduce fines for “incorrect statements and failures to disclose information.” The Telegraph says they will be set at £50 – more than three quarters of weekly benefit for a single person on JSA.
The penalty will apply to people who “negligently provide incorrect information.” How are claimants going to show they weren’t negligent? And how will Jobcentre Plus prove they were? This just looks like the main point is to add an extra layer of uncertainty and insecurity to the whole process of aplying for benefits.
Owen Tudor
This weekend sees the first G20 Finance Ministers meeting of 2011, and today, Thursday, was the second global day of action for a Financial Transactions Tax – known in the UK and several other countries as the Robin Hood Tax. Campaigners in 25 countries, 12 of them from the G20, lobbied the British, French and German embassies and took part in media stunts. We were calling on the French and German governments to turn their commitments into concrete action, and the British government to give up its perverse defence of the finance sector that caused the global financial crisis. In Britain, protests were held yesterday outside high street branches of some of the worst culprits, in London, Glasgow, Cardiff, Portsmouth, Bristol, Hereford and Wilmslow (George Osborne’s constituency). The movement is growing, and is having an impact: French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde has singled out public campaigns as one of the main reasons why FTTs are on the G20 agenda. We launched a petition on the Make Finance Work website, which people can embed on their own (as well as sign), aimed at the G20 summit in November. This year will be a crucial one for the campaign, but we have got off to a great start.
Owen Tudor
Today’s FT contained a fascinating article reporting that China’s wage rates have increased in real terms by over 10% a year in the last decade (ie they have more than doubled since 2000), but that productivity has risen commensurately. There are huge lessons here for trade unions addressing what has been one of the most persistent agenda items for the General Council of the International Trade Union Confederation: the impact of China on everyone else’s living standards.
Richard Exell
I have a post at Left Foot Forward, looking at this month’s employment figures. Unemployment is up and employment down, long-term unemployment is up and so is involuntary temporary and part-time work. Youth unemployment is especially high – and news is emerging of gaps in the government’s Work Programme.
Not a good news day.
Richard Exell
As I write this post the Commons is debating an Opposition Day motion:
That this House believes that the Government was wrong to cancel the Future Jobs Fund that would have created 200,000 jobs for young people; further believes that the Government’s economic policies have slowed economic growth, raised youth unemployment and created the highest graduate unemployment for over a decade; further believes that urgent action is now required to stop a generation of young people being lost to worklessness; and calls on the Government to commission an independent assessment of the Future Jobs Fund to report to Parliament before the Government’s Work Programme is implemented and to evaluate whether a guarantee and requirement of work incorporated into the Programme would bring down youth unemployment in the short and longer term and limit steep rises in welfare payments.
As I’ve been lamenting the loss of the FJF ever since the election it should come as no surprise that I agree that scrapping the programme was a terrible mistake.
Sam Royston
At the heart of the Government’s plans for welfare reform is the intention to improve the financial reward for moving into and progressing in work. However, as Family Action’s new report “Pushed towards poverty: 21 welfare cuts for low income working households” shows, many of the reforms introduced in last year’s Budget and Comprehensive Spending Review do the reverse, reducing the incentives to work for many households.
For instance, many of the families we work with are couples who work hard to balance their work and childcare responsibilities, and to stay in work of between 16-23 hours per week. Changes to eligibility rules for Working Tax Credits could lead to some of these couples losing up to £3,810 per year in Tax Credit entitlement. Indications suggest that the changes could leave them worse off in than out of work – and potentially push these families into poverty.
Scarlet Harris
I was struck by today’s news that Denise Marshall, Chief Executive of Eaves women’s charity and campaign group, has handed back her OBE on principle. While some may well ask what the point is of an OBE in the first place – and therefore, what the significance of giving it back is – Denise Marshall has undoubtedly achieved something important with this symbolic action. She’s made cuts to women’s services front page news. That’s no mean feat.
She has successfully drawn the media’s attention to the fact that, in spite of much vaunted government pledges to invest £10m in Rape Crisis centres, the charity sector, and the Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG) sector is facing a very bleak future as funding – central, local, and grant based – evaporates into thin air.