Richard Exell's Archive — Page 4
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
Today’s DWP report on Fraud and Error in the Benefit System really ought to get more coverage. With this publication we now have figures for the whole of the financial year 2010/11, and they show:
If we look at the estimates for different benefits, they are:
Richard Exell
Every month, the Treasury publishes a round-up of what independent (mainly City) forecasters are saying about the economy. This always includes the average of these forecasts for the current year and every third month there’s also a table of “medium-term forecasts”. This month’s comparison does offer a little bit of cheer – last month, the average forecast for GDP growth in 2012 fell to 0.4 per cent; this month the average for new forecasts is slightly higher, at 0.5 per cent.
But the main news is the medium-term forecasts, and these are much less reassuring. These were last published in November and they weren’t all that brilliant, but today’s are worse. The table below presents both sets, the final line is taken from the Office for Budget Responsibility’s November Economic and Fiscal Outlook, which now looks somewhat optimistic:
Richard Exell
As we know, the government thinks too many homes in the social rented sector are “under-occupied.” They’re so worked up about the issue they plan to restrict Housing Benefit for working age people with a council or Housing Association property that is “larger than their household size requires.” (Full discosure: my boss signed a letter to the Guardian opposing this.)
Today’s statistics from the English Housing Survey throw an interesting light on the government’s concerns. There’s a useful table that looks at owner occupiers, people in private rented properties and social renters and says what proportion of each live in homes that are at standard, 1 room above, under-occupied and over-crowded (an issue the government keeps quiet about.) Most people in all types of tenure live in properties that are either at standard or just one bedroom above, but look at the extremes:
Richard Exell
I have a post at Left Foot Forward, looking at today’s Report on Jobs from the Recruitment and Employment Confederation (the trade body for employment agencies). There was a “modest” increase in placements by employment agencies in January – but it’s the first improvement for four months, so it’s quite good news. Unfortunately, as I show, we’ll need much stronger growth before unemployment begins to fall.
Richard Exell
Before the recession, this country could take some pride in its jobs record – our unemployment rate was lower than the average for developed countries. Over the past four years, unemployment has risen, but it has in most countries – what is our relative position like? Well, new figures from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics provide a rather depressing answer to that question.
The BLS provides tables for the USA and nine other countries America compares itself with, one of which is the UK. The most usable figures are those that translate each set of national figures into US definitions. This means they’re not quite the figures we’re used to talking about in this country, but it’s the relative position we’re interested in here, so that doesn’t matter so much. Our unemployment rate is still a little lower than America’s and Italy’s, and significantly lower than France’s:(*)
Our unemployment rate is usually higher than Japan’s, but it is a little depressing to find ourselves lagging some of the other countries so badly. What’s much more interesting, though, is how these countries have coped with the impact of the global recession on their labour markets: (*)
Richard Exell
Today the Commons will ‘consider’ the amendments to the Welfare Reform Bill passed by the House of Lords Amendments. They are (courtesy of the Guardian):
These are all humane and necessary amendments. As Sue Marsh has pointed out, disabled people’s and carer’s organisations are united in opposing the Bill and it’s hard to find even individual disabled people who don’t support these amendments. Yesterday, the Children’s Commissioners for England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland united to express their “deep concerns” at “the serious negative impact of the proposals in the Welfare Reform Bill on hundreds of thousands of children.” Shelter, the National Housing Federation, Homeless Link and Crisis have warned that the Bill will increase the number of homeless families.
Richard Exell
Today the Department for Work and Pensions published the latest statistics on the results of the Work Capability Assessment – the eligibility test for Employment and Support Allowance (which is replacing the old Incapacity Benefit). The newspapers today are full of stories about social security after the government’s defeat in the Lords, but I can’t find any mention of these figures.
Which is strange – these figures come out every three months and previously the tabloids have had a field day with them.
Richard Exell
People with memories of politics the seventies and eighties will have been taken back in time by today’s front page lead in the Daily Telegraph:
370,000 migrants on the dole
On the one hand, the paper plays up “concerns that the country has become a destination for ‘benefit tourists’”. Then, towards the end of the article, there is equal outrage at the fact that “90 percent of new jobs created in Britain over the past decade have gone to foreign -born workers.”
All those arguments where you ended up asking “are you angry because they have got jobs or because they haven’t?” It’s like being back in my twenties.
Richard Exell
The January labour market figures are terrible – the unemployment statistics look more and more like what we got used to in the 1980s. But, at first sight, it’s encouraging that the number of people in work went up a little. I’ve recorded a quick video to explain why this picture is misleading.
Richard Exell
I have a post at Left Foot Forward, looking at today’s labour market statistics. Unemployment is up 118,000 – if it continues rising at the rate it has in recent months, it will reach three million by this summer:
