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The Children’s Commissioner for England says something we’ve been arguing for years: “The failure of parents or carers to comply with conditions on benefits or take up the incentives offered in the Bill does not affect the Government’s children’s rights obligations, including the requirements to provide social security and an adequate standard of living for all children.”
We’ve also been arguing that: “Benefit levels have for some years been consistently below the poverty line (60% of median income) and the Minimum Income Standards. This has a serious impact on the rights of children.”
The Benefit Cap will cause “an increase in child poverty, with associated poor health, educational and other outcomes”.
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This report by Citizens’ Advice on Employment and Support Allowance work capability assessment reports finds that far too many are inaccurate.
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From End Child Poverty, a map showing the proportion of children who are poor across the UK, with a breakdown for local authorities and parliamentary constituencies. In Bethnal Green and Bow, 51% of children are poor; in Nick Clegg’s Sheffield Hallam, just 5%.
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The British Chambers of Commerce say their survey’s results are “disappointing” and “give cause for concern”. Results are not as bad as during the depths of the recession, but “the improvement seen in recent years has mostly been wiped out”.
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Matt Cavanagh, on the New Statesman's blog, takes apart the Migration Watch report that links youth unemployment and immigration. He points out: 1. Migration Watch blames youth unemployment lon the decision to open up the UK labour market to Eastern European nationals in 2004, but youth unemployment started rising two years earlier, in 2002; 2. The peak period for rising youth unemployment was 2008-9, when nothing new was happening in immigration, but the recession was biting hardest; 3. Other countries that have had a steep increase in youth unemployment, like Spain and Greece, haven't seen big rises in immigration. Germany has had high immigration, but low youth unemployment.
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A forthcoming study from researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, finds that people in lower socio-economic classes are quicker to express compassion than better-off people.
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Simon Chouffot of the Robin Hood Tax campaign spells out why a European Financial Transactions Tax would not end up in the Commission’s coffers, and how joining in would be better for Britain than staying out.
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The union-backed Economic Policy Institute has a good analysis of the jobs data that came out of the USA today. The US economy put on 200,000 jobs in December, and the unemploymentrate has dropped from 9.9% two years ago to 8.5%. However, the EPI estimates that at this rate of job growth it will still take until 2019 for employment to recover to the level itwould have reached without the recession.
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Our colleagues in the Nigerian trade union movement protest again against fuel price hikes. They have to do this every few years because the Government of the oil-producing country – whose people see barely a fraction of the benefit of producing so much fuel – has mismanaged its energy policy so badly for decades. Solidarity with the NLC and NTUC!
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Hugh writes on Stronger Unions about David Cameron’s latest plans to ‘kill off’ the UK’s supposed health and safety culture.
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Research by the IFS for the Family and Parenting Institute looks at likely poverty rates and incomes for different family types up to 2015. Families with children will see the biggest fall in income – down 4.2% in the 5 years to 2015; incomes for families without children will fall 0.9%. Families with children younger than 5 or with more than 2 children, and unemployed lone parents will suffer most. Half a million families with children under 5 will fall into absolute poverty by 2015-16 and the benefit changes are an important cause – though this will be partly offset by the introduction of Universal Credit.
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Survey by Save the Children finds that 54% of all parents are worried their children’s health will suffer because their house is too cold this winter; 59% are having to cut back on other essentials to afford their fuel bills this winter; half of all families plan to turn the heating off for longer to keep their bills down.
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Unite's Tony Burke reports on union pressure for a Robin Hood Tax in Germany: highlighting a joint press conference by DGB President Michael Sommer and German Chancellor Angela Merkel. David Cameron maintains that a European FTT would uniquely disadvantage the UK, but Germany has the second-biggest financial transactions market in the EU, so Germany would – if Cameron was right – also be a net loser. If only Cameron was less in hock to the financiers of the City! (And if he was less anti-trade union, maybe he could do joint press conferences with the TUC!)
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Construction industry figures pick holes in the government's infrastructure plans: actual government capital investment will fall £14bn over the next 3 years, because of the much bigger cuts in the 2010 CSR.
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Cllr David Rogers, Chairman of the Local Government Association's Community Wellbeing Board, accused the Government of underfunding local authorities, leaving the social care system "not fit for purpose". The Labour Party claims there is a "postcode lottery" in the amount people pay for social care, with huge disparities across the country.
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Brian Basham – "as regulation in the UK and the US has loosened its restraints, the monsters have proliferated."
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Excellent article by Jayati Ghosh about how increased/maintained spending on quality public services financed by progressive taxation/development aid is needed to prevent yet another surge in global unemployment.
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Kevin Watkins, senior research fellow at the Brookings Institution, writes in Guardian Development about how we can pay for the Millennium Development Goal on children's education. "How about using proceeds from a global financial transaction tax to pay for an initiative that could bring hope to millions of the world's most disadvantaged children? Now that would be innovative financing."
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Paul Krugman has a note for British readers: "every time Cameron takes credit for low British rates, he’s hoping you don’t know that the same thing has been happening in every non-euro advanced country."
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Research by the Resoliution Foundation shows theTax Credit cuts will far outweigh the impact of the income tax cuts. On average, basic rate tax payers will be £41 a year better off but low-to-middle income families with children will be much worse off.
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ToUChstoneblog's Archive — Page 2