Tim Page
I have a piece on the Huffington Post website today, giving a TUC reaction to the BAE job losses from this Tuesday. Lessons must be learned. Lesson one: rapid public spending cuts will undermine any private sector recovery. Lesson two: we can’t hang on much longer without a meaningful strategy for economic growth. Try to have a good weekend.
Tim Page
I enjoyed Martin Kettle’s reflection on Ed Mililband’s Labour Conference speech in this morning’s Guardian. It covered lots of ground but, if you’ve followed my blogs before, you will guess that I want to pick up on Kettle’s comments about a role for industrial policy.
Martin Kettle puts the case for “well argued and flexible new models of workplace co-determination of the kind that have done so much for German companies”, rather than “an expanded role for unions”. Germany, of course, has both. Its workplace co-determination model has been hugely successful (more about this in the TUC’s forthcoming report on industrial policy in Germany and the UK, which will be published towards the end of this year) but, whilst officially German employee representatives could be anybody, in practice they tend to be union members.
Nicola Smith
Policy Exchange have recently taken to making a widely reported claim that “recent research has suggested that Jobseekers Allowance (JSA) claimants spend as little as eight minutes a day searching for work.” But is it true?
Liz Lovell
The Welfare Reform Bill proposes replacing Disability Living Allowance with Personal Independence Payments
No one could argue with the government’s stated aim of the Welfare Reform Bill: to make it easier for people to access financial support when they need it. However there are a great number of concerns about the unintended consequences of the Bill, and the fact that changes are being made in the context of needing to find a cost saving of 20%.
Under proposals in the Bill, Disability Living Allowance (DLA) will be replaced by Personal Independence Payments (PIP). DLA is an effective way of supporting some of the most disadvantaged families in theUK. It is available to disabled children and adults to help them meet the extra costs associated with having a disability. Although PIP will initially be rolled out to those aged 16-64, the Bill provides the legislative framework for children under-16 to be moved onto PIP in the future.
The Children’s Society has serious concerns about the impact of these proposed changes on disabled children and young people.
Philip Pearson
The Transport Secretary’s proposal to raise the speed limit to 80mph could result in carbon dioxide emissions up to 3.5 million tonnes of CO2 higher than keeping to the current limit. A better enforced 70mph limit on motorways would prevent over 300 deaths and serious injuries per annum on motorways alone. And if the existing 70mph speed limit were strictly enforced, this could reduce emissions by 1.3 MtCO2 in 2020. All this is known to the Government from the reports it receives from the Committee on Climate Change.
Paul Sellers
The National Minimum Wage (NMW) rates will increase again on Saturday 1 October. We have strong arguments for a more generous increase, especially in these time of relatively high inflation, but we should perhaps also just take a moment to celebrate the fact that every increase that has been achieved has been fought for by the trade union movement. The Low Pay Commission (LPC) estimates that the latest rise will benefit around 890,000 employees – certainly worth a quick cheer.
Richard Exell
A new item on the Independent website sends me into a slough of despond. It’s a report that the European Commission has warned the UK government that the benefits rule that limits benefits to people with a “right to reside” in the UK is probably contrary to EU law.
Let’s be clear, the “right to reside” rule wasn’t invented by the current government, it was brought in by their predecessors. And one of the reasons I’m so depressed is that I can remember several people saying to officials that this new rule looked like it was in breach of EU law. Oh no, we were told, this just showed how little we knew; government lawyers, who were experts were confident there was no problem.
Richard Exell
Research into rents in London shows that an underlying assumption behind the government’s Housing Benefit reforms is mistaken. As we’ve noted over the past year, the availability of HB will be restricted and the amount of help tenants get will be reduced by the government’s proposals for Housing Benefit and cuts in support for local authorities. These include:
Stewart Lansley
Ed Miliband is hardly the first to attack ‘predator capitalism‘. It was Edward Heath in 2003, who, pointing to the money baron, Tiny Rowland, first coined the phrase, ‘the unacceptable face of capitalism’. In 2009, Lord Turner, chair of the Financial Services Authority described some of the activities of the City as ‘socially useless’.
When Mrs Thatcher and Ronald Reagan launched their campaign to change capitalism from the shackles of regulation, it came with big promises. Markets would be the route to economic renaissance bringing more enterprise and a boost to growth. Yet as I show in my new book The Cost of Inequality, Three Decades of the Super-Rich and the Economy, on all measures of economic performance bar inflation, ‘market capitalism’ has a much poorer record than the regulated model of the earlier post-war period.
Owen Tudor
Reactions to the European Commission’s plans for a Robin Hood Tax have been coming in so I thought I’d list some here. First indications from the UK Government were predictably negative, although presumably George Osborne’s argument that ’he can’t support an EU tax because it needs to be global’ means he will be voting to back Bill Gates when the issue is raised at the G20… But the move has been backed by the TUC, the ETUC and the Party of European Socialists.
Meanwhile, across in the USA, Dean Baker reflects on why and how Wall Street has closed down the debate on what US campaigners call a financial speculation tax. He says: