Richard Exell's Archive — Page 2
I am the TUC’s Senior Policy Officer covering social security, tax credits and labour market issues, including the debates about the European social model and labour market flexibility. I also represent the TUC on the Industrial Injuries Advisory Council.
Richard Exell
There, I bet you didn’t expect to read that headline! But the revelation that London Mayor Boris Johnson submitted comments to the consultation on Disability Living Allowance reform prompts an unusual response.
It isn’t just the political frisson that comes from knowing that BoJo’s submission had to be feretted out with a FoI application, it’s the fact that he criticises the plans to replace DLA with Personal Independence Payment for exactly the right reasons:
Richard Exell
Responsible Reform is a report launched today about the government’s plans to replace Disability Living Allowance with a new benefit called Personal Independence Payment. The report marks a new stage in the campaign against social security cuts.
For decades, disabled people have been campaigning against policies that affect our lives being decided entirely by non-disabled people. Today’s report was entirely written, researched, funded, and supported by sick and disabled people, their friends and carers.
Richard Exell
There’s an interesting turn of affairs in the Eurostat data for employment that I hadn’t noticed before today. Across Europe, the proportion of workers who work in part-time jobs has increased; this has also been observable in the UK, but to a lesser extent:
The same European trend is visible if we confine ourselves to the period since the start of the recession. But the increase since the start of 2008 has been more marked in the United Kingdom:
Richard Exell
Well, 2012 is starting where 2011 left off, with more signs we’re heading back to recession. Some reports of today’s Purchasing Managers’ Index results emphasise the fact that it’s up to 49.6 from 47.7 in November. But any result below 50 is a deterioration, albeit at a slower rate and Markit, the organisation which produces the Index, notes that over the fourth quarter as a whole, this country suffered the worst fall in output since the second quarter of 2009. We should be particularly worried that this is also true for new orders.
Other depressing news items today included the Financial Times’ survey of 83 economists’ expectations for the coming year (£) in which three times as many thought the economic outlook would deteriorate as that it would improve and Lloyds Bank’s monthly business barometer, which fell to its lowest level in three years in December.
I was particularly struck by Deloitte’s survey of finance directors. Their view of their companies’ financial prospects headed south throughout last year and is now as bad as it was at the end of 2008:
Richard Exell
Olivier Blanchard’s post yesterday on the IMF blog has caused quite a few ripples. (Read Duncan’s brilliant response for a much more thorough explanation of its significance than I’m going to try here). The point that’s aroused most comments is:
Third, financial investors are schizophrenic about fiscal consolidation and growth.
They react positively to news of fiscal consolidation, but then react negatively later, when consolidation leads to lower growth—which it often does. Some preliminary estimates that the IMF is working on suggest that it does not take large multipliers for the joint effects of fiscal consolidation and the implied lower growth to lead in the end to an increase, not a decrease, in risk spreads on government bonds. To the extent that governments feel they have to respond to markets, they may be induced to consolidate too fast, even from the narrow point of view of debt sustainability.
Richard Exell
Here at Touchstone we appreciate how tough the Christmas holidays can be: Christmas Dinner with your brother who thinks unions are bringing the country to its knees and an afternoon in the pub with your dad’s friend whose only quibble with the Daily **** is that it’s got too many pinkos writing for it.
Well, here it is – Ten Points on Regulation, over at the TUC website. So the next time you think you’re going to get into an argument with someone who believes unemployment is all the fault of the minimum wage, you might like to have a quick look.
And if you’ve got some better arguments to make the case against de-regulation or facts and figures to illustrate it, let us know, we’ll update it in a few weeks’ time.
Richard Exell
Two important reports today underline the squeeze on living standards that is damaging domestic demand. The Bank of England’s Quarterly Bulletin emphasises the importance of this issue:
An important feature of this recovery relative to past ones — and a key reason why the pace of the recovery has been disappointing — is the weakness in household consumption. Consumption spending is estimated to have fallen by over 1% in the first half of this year alone.
The Bank and NMG Consulting carry out an annual survey of households’ financial positions and the latest is reported in the Quarterly Bulletin. And it’s a depressing read, even for a professional misery-guts like me:
Richard Exell
There’s an interesting discussion going on about what a future government could do to reduce inequality if the scope for increasing public spending is small to non-existent. In addition to In the Black Labour, a lot of people are referring back to Ed Miliband’s speech to the Social Market Foundation last month:
The fiscal challenges we face mean we need to find new ways of delivering social justice. The last Labour government made Britain a better place. I believe our progress on the NHS, schools and crime shows that. The Blair/Brown approach, with social progress resting on higher investment, was right.
But the failure of the Government’s austerity plan means that the next Labour government is likely to inherit a deficit that still needs to be reduced. So even then resources will have to be focused significantly on paying down that deficit.
And Martin Kettle’s piece in today’s Guardian about “the politics of ‘no more money’” sets out some of the political aspects very well. But, as I argued ten days ago, the scope for reducing inequality without spending more on benefits is limited. That post was mainly based on the OECD’s ground-breaking study of inequality, but there are also lessons to be learned from the last government’s efforts to eradicate child poverty.
Richard Exell
I have a post at Left Foot Forward, looking at today’s employment statistics: there’s new records for awful jobs figures, the government’s forecasts assume that the rise in unemployment over the next 12 months will be no worse than the rise over the last 12 months and private sector growth just isn’t strong enough to compensate for all the public sector jobs being lost.
Richard Exell
The evidence mounts by the day that the UK’s decline into stagnation pre-dates the problems in the Euro Area. Today’s item is the Eurostat data for industrial production in October. The figures for changes from October 2010 show clearly that, while industrial production in the Euro Area was 1.3 per cent higher in October 2011, in the UK it was 2 per cent lower:
|
Country |
Percentage increase from October 2010 |
|
Ireland |
12.2 |
|
Sweden |
6.0 |
|
Germany |
4.2 |
|
France |
1.4 |
|
Euro Area |
1.3 |
|
European Union |
1.3 |
|
Portugal |
0.6 |
|
Denmark |
-0.3 |
|
Netherlands |
-2.0 |
|
United Kingdom |
-2.0 |
|
Spain |
-4.0 |
|
Italy |
-4.2 |
|
Finland |
-6.0 |
|
Greece |
-12.4 |
If we look at the industrial production indices for the Euro Area and the UK (2005 = 100) we can see that the index has been falling in this country since the start of the year. In the Euro Area the downward trend begins in the summer:
