Nigel Stanley's Archive 
I’m the TUC’s Head of Campaigns and Communications, and have been working at the TUC since 1994. I manage campaigning, media relations, parliamentary lobbying, publications and event organisation. As I work in communications and public affairs, my blogging is likely to range widely, but superficially.
If I have a specialist subject, it’s pensions. I have led a lot of the TUC’s work on implementing the Pensions Commission proposals. I have been a Trustee Member of the Nest Corporation.
In the past, I’ve freelanced in public affairs, research and journalism, including with the European Commission, Labour Party and a number of MPs. I did research, press and campaign management at the House of Commons in the 80’s and early 90’s, first for Robin Cook and then for Bryan Gould. Before that I was Organising Secretary of the Labour Co-ordinating Committee from its launch in 1978. I play ska/jazz bass guitar with the Skamonics and have part-ownership of a canal boat.
Nigel Stanley
Every so often I chart some of the questions that YouGov have been consistently asking on public attitudes to spending cuts. While it is clear that the government parties have lost support (not to mention the UKIP surge), this has not necessarily produced significant changes in attitudes to some of the key economic questions.
Nigel Stanley
Here’s a heat map of the decline in pay packets in the nations and regions of Britain that we reveal today, and which Rob has written about at more length here.
Nigel Stanley
Today the government’s consultation on the restrictions on NEST closes.
The TUC has joined with other consumer groups and a coalition of employers to support the lifting of the contributions limit – no-one can save more than £4,200 a year – and the ban on transfers in or out of NEST. But insurance companies – with one honourable exception – still oppose. Helen sets out the background clearly here.
Nigel Stanley
Reading the new DWP single tier state pension white paper I was struck by this graph (on page 63).
Basic state pension as a percentage of average earnings
Nigel Stanley
The pensions world awaits the detail of the government’s White Paper setting out how they will achieve their goal of providing a single flat rate pension set above means-testing level. It’s a worthy objective – and many of the right people will gain – but the test will be how it’s paid for.
But that analysis has to wait until we see and analyse the White Paper. What we can do now is look at the implications of a flat rate pension for other parts of the policy jigsaw as pensions policy in recent years has been set assuming that many people will retire and rely on means-tested pensioner benefits. Indeed this was a favourite starting point for those wishing to oppose auto-enrolment – inevitably some people will lose means-tested benefits to the extent that they might have been better off opting out, even if the numbers are likely to be quite small, particularly when compared to the millions who gain.
Nigel Stanley
The Conservative case for capping benefits is that they have been growing faster than earnings, as their poster today seeks to highlight.
I thought it might be interesting to look at how unemployment benefit has moved compared to earnings over a slightly more representative period.. So I turned to the DWP’s Annual Abstract of Statistics, which is designed (among other things) to give precise answers to such questions.
Nigel Stanley
I am not a big fan of the argument that the old are screwing the young. But George Osborne will certainly feed it today.
His clever political wheeze was to freeze benefits at one per cent. This is going to be written into statute (at present the law requires them to be linked to inflation) and he thinks that challenging Labour to vote against this cut in living standards will expose them as the scrounger’s friend.
Nigel Stanley
The Chancellor slipped in the “we are all in it together” mantra right at the end of his speech.
But the Treasury’s own figures do not exactly bear this out. This chart is taken from the Treasury’s distributional analysis of the Autumn Statement.
Nigel Stanley
The strong rumours that the Chancellor would limit pensions tax relief in the Autumn Statement have turned out to be true.
Predictably the pensions industry was up in arms about the prospect.
But by defending the indefensible they do not help pensions for the many. Instead they make it easier for the Chancellor.
The pensions world should look at ways that redistribute the current hand-outs instead. What now goes to the highest earners should instead go to more modest savers or current pensioners. Otherwise pensions tax relief will continue to be shaved away with no benefit to pensions.
Nigel Stanley
George Osborne made much of the fact the the richest are paying a high share of income tax.
But that’s because the richest have got richer.
