Graham Whitham

The government is cutting the childcare support in the tax credit system. In response, Save the Children and Daycare Trust have launched a major consultation exercise aimed at understanding how the cost of childcare is affecting families.

The Government has yet to set out how support with childcare costs will work under Universal Credit. However, support is likely to be based on the current childcare ‘funding envelope’ but spread over a greater number of parents. We already know that current support isn’t enough. Support will be spread too thinly without extra funding, with some parents finding they’re priced out of the jobs market by high childcare costs.  

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Richard Exell

Employment prospects are starting to look reasonably good in manufacturing and, to a lesser extent, business services, but those two industries by themselves won’t generate the jobs and growth we need. Earlier this week, the monthly report from the Bank of England’s Agents noted that employment prospects in retailing and consumer services firms had dipped,

reflecting rising uncertainty about the outlook for household spending.

Frankly, today’s news won’t have changed anyone’s minds in these businesses.

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Richard Exell

I’ve recorded a video blog to take a closer look at the employment figures for May. They’re a bit of a mixed bag: some good headlines, but – as you’ll see – some worrying signs for the future.

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Paul Sellers

Today is Work From Home Day, which is an annual event organised by WorkWiseUK to promote smarter working – flexible working and  high-quality home-working. The TUC is interested in home working because there is a huge unmet demand amongst workers. Indeed, research commissioned by the previous government suggests some 4.5 million more employees would like to work from home for at least part of the week.

The problem is that difficult economic times means that many employers have turned their attention to other matters, whilst some employees have also become more reluctant to ask  for home-working in workplaces where rumours of redundancies are in the air. More now needs to be done to promote smarter working, otherwise we will miss out on an easy win-win solution that also benefits our environment.

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Matt Dykes

New research by the Local Government Chronicle demonstrates that the full impact on regional economic development resulting from the Government’s abolition of RDAs.

Using Freedom of Information requests, LGC have revealed that, across eight RDA regions, 2,841 separate regeneration, economic development and business support projects have ended in the past twelve months as a result of £1.36 budget cuts.   In addition, over 1,800 RDA staff have lost their jobs.

This represents a reduction in economic development activity of 73% from 2010.

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Matt Dykes

Apologies for the mixed animal metaphors but both apply particularly well to Sir Roy McNulty’s report on value for money in the UK rail industry, published today.

Given the scale of the public subsidy and the painfully high fares inflicted on passengers, the review offered a great opportunity to address the long standing problems within the privatised rail industry.

It is disappointing that this opportunity has been squandered. 

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Richard Exell

What works at cutting inequality? New figures show that we already do a great deal – and suggest how we could do even more.

There’s sometimes a terrible fatalism about inequality – most people agree that Britain is unequal and that this is a problem, but many believe that  this  is inevitable. This sense that nothing can be done about inequality is encouraged by Ministers who like to emphasise the large sums spent by the last government, and then add “but it didn’t do any good.”

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Scarlet Harris

I want to say a few words about Ken Clarke’s views on rape and rape law but I’m struggling to know where to begin.

So what did he say that was wrong? In case you missed the furore today, I’ll briefly recap. Kenneth Clarke was asked about plea bargaining plans on Radio 5 Live this morning. In the course of the interview, in a discussion about sentencing and tariffs, the Justice Secretary shared his rather troubling views on rape. He said:

“[Rape] includes date rape and 17 year-olds having intercourse. Serious rape, I don’t think many judges give five years for a forcible rape, frankly, the tariff is longer for that and a serious rape where there’s violence and an unwilling woman, the tariff’s much longer than that.”

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Richard Exell

I have a post at Left Foot Forward, looking at today’s job figures. Unemployment is down and employment is up but there are worrying signs that the long-term prospects for employment are not so bright.

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Richard Exell

Back in March the Office for Budget Responsibility published their Economic and Fiscal Outlook; possibly the most quoted forecast is for expected levels of GDP to 2015. Yesterday, the Treasury published their monthly round-up of City economists’ Forecastsfor the UK Economy including their “medium-term forecasts”. They’re a bit less optimistic than the OBR:

With the National Institute estimating growth in the three months to Apil at 0.3% – an annual rate of just 1.2% – this is a perfectly fair consensus.

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