Matthew Egan
Day in and day out huge numbers of disabled, old and vulnerable people are receiving rushed, substandard and undignified levels of homecare in the UK. It’s a scandal. But one that is too often ignored, or shown blatant disregard, by political parties and the mainstream media.
There has been a truly shameful decline in the standard of care that is given to some of our most isolated and disadvantaged people in their own homes.
Lesley Mercer
This year’s TUC President Lesley Mercer, from the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy, looks ahead to the European Trade Union Confederation’s 40th anniversary conference on Monday, where she will be representing British trade unions with General Secretary Frances O’Grady and General Council spokesperson on Europe, Billy Hayes. You can follow the conference on twitter using #ETUC40.
Trade union confederations gathering in Madrid this weekend will be debating the issues that really matter to ordinary people. How to deliver sustainable growth and jobs? How to give citizens, workers and their unions a genuine role in economic and monetary union? How to embed a true social dimension into everything the European Union does?
The ETUC’s groundbreaking ‘Social Compact for Europe’ spells out what a social dimension means. Fair wages and progressive taxation, access to equality and social protection, and the opportunity for workers to have a voice at work through union involvement in free collective bargaining and social dialogue.
Richard Exell
Hansard has just published poverty Minister Esther McVey’s answer to a written question from Chris Skidmore MP about the impact of the Welfare Benefits Uprating Bill on child poverty. She told him that
We estimate that the uprating measures in 2013-14, 2014-15 and 2015-16 will result in around an extra 200,000 children being deemed by this measure to be in relative income poverty compared to uprating benefits by CPI. [My emphasis.]
Remember that the Institute for Fiscal Studies has already forecast that, in 2015, the number of children in poverty will have risen to 2.9 million from the 2.5 million they inherited and that by 2020 it will have risen again, to 3.3 million. The latest figures are in addition to these increases.
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
Richard Exell
Thank God for Mississippi
The American saying goes: every time a new set of state-by-state economic or social rankings comes out, 49 Governors murmur “thank God for Mississippi” to themselves. No matter how badly their state has done, they can be sure the Magnolia state will have done worse.
Perhaps British politicians should get used to saying “thank God for Bulgaria.”
Richard Exell
Last night the Welfare Uprating Bill passed its second reading. There will be other votes, but the pitiful size of the government rebellion (as Mark Ferguson has pointed out, it was confined to 4 Liberal Democrats with seats on Labour’s target list) means that the math is not on the side of the angels. If this Bill becomes law we can expect:
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.
John Wood
Graphic from today’s Independent on our poll findings
The government should perhaps be a little more cautious over the level of public support they believe they enjoy for welfare cuts. We’ve got a new YouGov poll out today, which has found that those supporting the government approach are more likely to be those currently in a position of ignorance on the issues.
Richard Exell
Last month Esther McVey, our new Minister “for” Disabled People, published the draft regulations that set out the qualifying rules for Personal Independence Payment (PIP) which is to replace Disability Living Allowance (DLA). These new rules will lead to 960,000 fewer people getting help with the extra costs of coping with disability and 400,000 fewer will qualify for an adapted car from the Motability scheme. More than 5,000 jobs in the car industry could be threatened.
By 2018, existing claimants of DLA will have been re-assessed and transferred to PIP. It’s important to acknowledge that some people will be better off: the Department for Work and Pensions’ revised impact assessment says that, of 1.75 million people who will be re-assessed, 510,000 will be better off and the awards of a further 270,000 will be unchanged. But the government’s objective of cutting spending on DLA by more than £1 billion has been clear since the 2010 Budget: 510,000 will be worse off and 450,000 people will lose all entitlement.
Richard Exell
Today’s new TUC report – Child Benefit: a bad case of neglect? - spells out the effect on families of the government’s ChildBenefit freeze followed by the 1 per cent cap in increases. By the end of 2015, a family with two children will have lost a cumulative total of over £1,000, compared with the policies on cost-of-living increases the government inherited from its predecessor. In 2013-14 alone they will lose £234 – a time when the Office for Budget Responsibility expects average earnings to rise 2.2 per cent, while CPI inflation will be higher, at 2.5 per cent.
Child Benefit provides another example of the Coalition inheriting the mantle of Mrs Thatcher. She was every bit as hostile to CB, but the freeze from 1987 was ended as soon as she ceased to be Prime Minister, with John Major increasing the benefit by more than inflation in 1991.
