The Government’s strategy for addressing poverty and inequality is geared towards tackling benefit dependency and making the transition into work easier. In this respect there is a great deal of continuity with the rhetoric, if not the practice, of the previous Labour administration. The publication today of this […]
The reform of Housing Benefit for private rented sector tenants made it back into the newspapers today. The Observer ran a story on the inside pages under the headline Ministers ‘bury’ report on cuts to housing benefit. The report they are referring to is the Impact Assessment (IA) […]
Nick Clegg’s Hugo Young speech last night is already generating plenty of comment in the old and new media. It was structured around a distinction between “old” and “new” progressives which is highly contestable. The characterisation of “old” progressives was not even a gross simplification. It was a […]
We have yet to feel the full force of the Coalition’s welfare cuts. But we are perhaps now starting to get an inkling of the reaction they will elicit when they finally arrive. One of the puzzling characteristics of much of the discussion of the agenda so far […]
[Originally posted on Liberal Democrat Voice, 11/11/10] It was entirely predictable. The opening moves in a game that could see another hard-won component of the welfare state undermined have now been played. It may have been predictable, but it is no less distasteful for all that.
Over at Liberal Democrat Voice it all kicked off in response to a post noting that in 2008 Labour under James Purnell changed JSA in a way that is very similar to IDS’s recently trailed proposals for compulsory unpaid work for long-term benefit claimants believed to need reconnecting […]
We are starting to get strong indications of the shape of the Coalition’s proposals on welfare. Today’s papers are trailing the core idea of requiring unemployed people to participate in 30-hours per week of unpaid manual work in the community for four week periods. It appears that if […]
The intersection of housing policy and benefits policy has become a focal point for political debate, and for tension within the Coalition government. Now that Tory MPs in marginal seats are starting to realise the electoral implications of a mass migration of poorer households into their constituencies perhaps […]
Since Wednesday’s CSR announcement much has been said and written about whether the proposed changes in public spending are “fair” or otherwise. Nick Clegg in particular has gone on the offensive and attacked the IFS for drawing the conclusion that the CSR measures are regressive, below the top […]
In 1927 the American Jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes stated that “Taxes are what we pay for civilized society”. That is sometimes rendered slightly more catchily as “Taxes are the price we pay for civilization”. This observation seems entirely apposite in the context of current debates over how to […]
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