Owen Tudor
Well not quite. But there was certainly a Biblical element to the venue for tonight’s debate on the Robin Hood Tax: St Paul’s Cathedral. The moral tone – so often absent from mainstream debates on tax, inequality and the global crisis – was a welcome innovation (admittedly it’s not so rare in discussions on climate change and international development!)
Richard Exell
Less than one per cent of the benefit bill is lost to fraud and that proportion is significantly lower than it was ten years ago. I’m willing to bet a small sum that that’s a headline you won’t see in any of the right-leaning newspapers. Its certainly the case that there’s been no publicity so far for the Department of Work and Pensions’ Fraud and Error in the Benefit System, new out today.
Richard Exell
The government’s partial u-turn on Educational Maintenance Allowances shows that campaigning against the cuts can make the government change their mind. There’s two things to say about the planned £180 million bursary scheme: one is that it is less than a third of the £560 million spent on EMAs. But the other is that it is an improvement on the Spending Review plans – which were to spend just £50 million.
Owen Tudor
The conclusions of the European Council meeting on Friday (25 March) showed that the Governments of Europe are still locked into the economics of austerity: the plan is still to make ordinary people pay for the crisis, rather than the banks. But there is a real struggle taking place over one issue, which is the Financial Transactions Tax (FTT). Initial plans to carry the Eurozone decision to move forward with an FTT were watered down in the final communique, but yet another European leader came out in favour of an FTT. Jean-Claude Juncker, Prime Minister of Luxemburg for the last 16 years, represents a small country but one which – not least due to the preponderance of banking in its economy – has a disproportionate influence on European economic policy.
Anthea Sully
The budget focused heavily on the Chancellor’s plans for growing the economy and job creation, but there was very little which acknowledged the deepening crisis in social care support. The Learning Disability Coalition, formed in 2007 to fight against the cuts in social care, has often found that in times of crisis, it is the people who need the most support who suffer the most. In our current age of austerity, this has never been truer.
In the last year, we have seen an unprecedented reduction in services and support for people with learning disabilities. These range from big cuts, such as the closure of day services and respite homes to arbitrary cuts of 10% or more to all support packages, to the small, seemingly harmless cuts such as the reduction the number of incontinence pads for which a child is eligible. Sometimes it is the smallest cuts which take away people’s dignity and are the hardest to fight against that do the most damage. It is hardly surprising then, that so many people with a learning disability, their parents and carers are keen to join the March for the Alternative on 26th March.
Richard Exell
The economic outlook has got worse over the last six months. I know, I know, you knew I thought that already. But did you know it’s what the government’s own Office for Budget Responsibility believes too?
Their latest Economic and Fiscal Outlook updates the one they produced in November and it includes a handy table showing how their forecasts for the next five years have changed; it shows:
Every single one is a good reason for coming to tomorrow’s March for the Alternative.
Nicola Smith
This week’s Budget claimed that by 2012/13 the Government’s measures ‘could’ take 50,000 children out of poverty. Although this claim was heavily caveated (the Budget document states that estimates are uncertain and may be on the edge of statistical significance) it is at odds with December’s IFS analysis which suggested that over the same period relative child poverty would remain roughly constant, with the Government’s tax and benefit changes acting to increase poverty levels by 100,000.
How can this be? The answer appears to be revealed in the Budget policy costings document, which lists the benefits which the Treasury has included in its model. Surprise, the Treasury only includes two-thirds of the tax credit and benefit changes in its model and many of those which are excluded will have a significant impact for families with children. Most significnatly the excluded cuts include the majority of the reductions in Housing Benefit but also the abolition of the Sure Start Maternity Grant, the Health in Pregnancy Grant and the Child Trust Fund.
I know whose estimates I would rather believe.
Nicola Smith
The Resolution Foundation have done good work showing what the OBR’s forecasts mean for the growing gap between wages and inflation. But how do the levels of wage growth the OBR are predicting compare to the past? Using the method outlined in the OBR’s supplementary tables I have calculated how earnings have grown since the 1970s.
