Helen Nadin

The Government tabled an amendment to the Pensions Bill yesterday to be debated next week which will cap the maximum increase in women’s State Pension Age (SPA) to 66 at 18 months. While an admission by the Government that it got its plans wrong as the original plan would have seen some women’s SPA rise by two years, their changed plans are short shrift given the short notice hundreds of thousands of men and women have had for the increase in SPA.

The Government’s amendment means that the 33,000 women who would have worked two years longer than they expected to receive their Basic State Pension will no longer have to do so. However there will still be many thousands of women who will work up to 18 months longer than they originally expected to receive their Basic State Pension. In making this change to women’s SPA the Government has broken the Coalition Agreement.

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Richard Exell

There were the worst employment figures since the TUC started producing these video. For young people in particular: we saw the worst employment and unemployment figures since the current set of statistics began in 1992. There was a huge drop in part-time and temporary jobs and more record unemployment for women.

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Richard Exell

Today’s construction industry output data provides more evidence that the recovery has been draining away for a while now. Output in August was down 0.4% from July and 4.1% from August 2010. If you look at the more consistent figures for three month periods, the decline in total output in June – August 2011 from the same period in 2010 is lower, at 1.9%. But a breakdown into different categories is quite revealing:

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Richard Exell

Yesterday’s Business Population Estimates from BIS allow us to take another look at one of modern politics’ magnificent pieties: the importance of small businesses to the economy.

What concerns me is not so much the small business people themselves – in my experience, most of them are nice enough – as the way in which their importance is used to justify any attack on workers’ rights.

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Nigel Stanley

Not for the first time the Daily Mail want you to believe that a quarter of your council tax pays for pensions.

I explain why this is deeply misleading in a post on our new Pensions Justice campaign website.

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Philip Pearson

Government support for the UK solar industry – kicked off by Labour, continued under the Coalition – has now created 25,000 jobs in the domestic solar market. That’s 22,000 more installing small domestic systems than when the UK Feed-In Tariff (FIT) scheme began last year. And a further 2,500 new jobs were created in 2010 in the larger solar units covered by a separate Government support scheme. According to the Renewable Energy Association , 80% of the jobs in solar are in installations – solar modules are typically only half the cost. The other half is labour costs, now being met by thousands of companies and employees.

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Richard Exell

Today’s trade statistics are good news, so I can understand why some people have given them such a warm welcome, but there’s a risk that we’re putting all our export eggs in one basket.

Let’s start off with the reasons for welcoming these figures for trade in August:

• Total UK balance of trade in August was – £1.9 billion, down from – £2.3 billion in July and – £3.6 billion in August 2010.
• The deficit in goods was £7.8 billion, down from £8.2 billion in both July 2011 and August 2010.
• The surplus in services was £5.9 billion, unchanged from July and up from £4.6 billion in August 2010.

This is good news – it gives some hope for the prospects of an export-led recovery, and it is what we should expect, given the fact that sterling is much more competitive than it was pre-recession. But if you break down those figures, you can see reasons for worry.

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Richard Exell

After yesterday’s heartbreaking vote in the House of Lords, today brings more bad news for the National Health Service. The snappily-titled statistics on Investment in General Practice 2006/07 to 2010/11 England, Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland, published today by the NHS Information Centre, reveals that investment in the GP service is already on a downwards trajectory.

In the most recent year (2010/11) total investment in General Practice in the UK was £9,789.4m, compared to £9,748.7m spent in 2009/10 – an increase of just 0.4%. This represents a substantial slowing down of progress:

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David Arnold

On a day that unemployment reaches levels not seen for 17 years, The new green team: Local Government, sustainable energy, jobs and skills, a timely report from UNISON shows both the huge potential of council-led sustainable energy projects.

The study, by consultants APSE, highlights policy and funding barriers standing in their way.  It’s a perfect example of how ideology can run counter to the needs of a green economy. Government may know that action is needed.  But they are also so uncomfortable about the public sector playing a role that they appear to be content for important opportunities to fall by the wayside.

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Richard Exell

I have a post at Left Foot Forward, looking at today’s labour market figures. We have the biggest increase in unemployment since the recession and figures for youth unemployment and women’s unemployment that are the worst since the current series of records began in 1992. There has been a drastic fall in part-time and temporary employment and the number of job vacancies has hardly moved. But the Minister for Employment thinks it’s all the Eurozone’s fault ….

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