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Posts Tagged ‘cuts’

Today’s growth figures vindicate the action Labour took, argues Alistair Darling

23/07/2010, 02:30:44 PM

Today figures show the results of the Labour Government’s balanced approach to supporting the recovery. And they remind us of the threat posed by the coalition’s willingness to take risks.

This is the fastest growth we have seen for over four years. It shows that confidence was returning. And you can see the success of maintaining support for important sectors like construction. This is the final nail in the coffin of the Coalition’s argument that things are worse than they believed before the election. Today’s figures show that growth was twice as fast as expected.

The Coalition’s economic policy is not inevitable – it’s the choice they’ve made. And they will have to accept responsibility for the risks they are taking with the economy.

As I have consistently argued, withdrawing help to the economy now puts growth in jeopardy and could be more costly in the long run if more people lose their jobs. It is increasingly clear that we’re seeing the return to politics of a serious ideological debate. This government’s clear and overriding priority is to cut back the state. Otherwise they would not announce cuts with such relish (more…)

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Cuts in Housing Benefit will cause hardship and increase homelessness, says Karen Buck

22/07/2010, 12:53:48 PM

Beveridge, intellectual giant, architect of the post war welfare state, threw in the towel when it came to sorting out rent subsidy. The Beveridge report argued, not unreasonably, that any coherent national system of subsidising housing costs for those who could not afford them was not feasible while rents varied so greatly between different part of the United Kingdom. The problem which confounded him has, if anything, intensified over the years. In the last three decades, to add to the intractable problem of regional variations in costs, governments of both colours pursued a deliberate policy of allowing Housing Benefit to ‘take the strain’ generated by decline in the provision of social rented housing. Today, housing need is one of the great policy challenges of the century, with demand for affordable homes far outstripping supply and subsidy, in the form of Housing Benefit, going instead into the pockets of private landlords supplying the roof over the head of an ever increasing number of low income households.

Taken in isolation from wider housing policy, one can understand the concern at the rising bill, and recognise the sense of injustice amongst working families at the small number of very extreme cases of households claiming Housing Benefit in our most expensive neighbourhoods. Intuitively, it seems as though we have got it wrong and the system is ripe for reform.

Yet seeing where a policy is wrong does not necessarily help us get it right. The measures set out in the Coalition budget for cutting subsidy to low income households is draconian, runs counter to all attempts to create mixed communities and could easily create a crisis of homelessness.

To summarise the proposals, a cap on the highest rents (mostly in London) will be followed by a reduction in Local Housing Allowances everywhere in the country, with future up-rating limited too. Working age households in private and social housing alike will see their benefit cut if they are deemed to have any spare bedrooms, and, in 2013 anyone on Jobseeker’s Allowance for a year loses 10% of their benefit.

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John Woodcock argues the defence spending row exposes Osborne’s spin

19/07/2010, 09:19:51 AM

George Osborne may be flavour of the month in Conservative associations and media comment pages, but the latest spending row between him and Defence Secretary Liam Fox has underlined a major weakness that Labour must exploit.

This appears to be an administration intent on learning from New Labour’s mistake of coming too slow to the table with fundamental reform. There is a speed and ferocity with which the Tories, aided and abetted by the Lib Dems, are seeking to embed a new presumption that public spending is bad while eye-watering cuts are wholesome and necessary.

What has been signalled so far surpasses the shrillest of Labour’s pre-election warnings – warnings that were rubbished as scare-mongering. Prior to victory, the Conservative leader gave the impression you could get spending back into balance simply by taking a Kim and Aggie approach to government waste.

Yet for all they could rightly protest to have been deceived, the public are hardly manning the barricades or demanding a re-run of the election. Attitudes may change substantially once the cuts begin to bite, but Labour cannot just sit back and wait for that to happen.

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We campaign in poetry, said Mario Cuomo, here’s Gordon Watson’s take on the Coalition Budget

16/07/2010, 05:23:52 PM

Where on earth’s Horatius …….?

[After ‘Horatius: A Lay made about the Year of the City CCCLX’.]

Dave Cameron and George Osborne,
By Bullingdon they swore,
The cost of Public Services
Should blight the rich no more.
By Bullingdon, George swore it,
And named his Budget day,
And sent his minions scurrying forth
East and west and south and north,
To make the poor man pay.

(more…)

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To win back voters we must question the Coalition’s action, says Sunny Hundal

15/07/2010, 11:23:52 AM

Just when the Labour party was starting to turn the tables on the Coalition, especially on education, up pops Pat McFadden to say that Labour needs to re-think its approach against the Coalition cuts.

The key line is this:

“Fight the cuts” is a tempting slogan in Opposition, and there are indeed some that must be fought. But if that is all we are saying the conclusion will be drawn that we are wishing the problem away.

I’m not going to disagree completely – saying the cuts aren’t necessary is not a position that chimes with the public (we lost the debate on that). Neither is it a position that will be electorally popular (voters aren’t as protective of the state as Labourites are).

But it’s unclear what line he would want the party to take instead. And here is where the speech falls down, because it fails to take into account the multiple problems Labour currently faces.

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The greatest trick the devil ever played

14/07/2010, 01:34:31 PM

Looks like Michael Ashcroft’s cash hasn’t reached Walsall. The re-run of the Bloxwich West by-election will take place tomorrow, and the poor cash-strapped Tory candidate has had to re-use her leaflets from May 6. Good for her you might say, saving on paper, and after all the only thing that needed to be changed on the front page was the date.

But it’s not just the council candidate who is cash strapped. After Michael Gove took his knife to the Building Schools for the Future programme Walsall schools are cash-strapped too. Luckily for the council candidate you can gloss over the loss of £200million schools investment you were previously claiming credit for, that you’re government has just pulled, with some subtle editing. Click on the picture below to see the Tories make that investment disappear. Now that’s magic.

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Cuts to food and trips: MPs to share the public sector pain

23/06/2010, 10:24:32 AM

The Speaker, John Bercow, last night wrote to MPs pledging extra cuts to House of Commons spending “in the light of increased financial constraints on the public sector”.

He told MPs that “the House of Commons Commission has agreed to cut £12 million from the budget for the House in the current year. This marks the start of a fundamental review of expenditure, which will deliver further savings over the next three years.

The savings to be made this year are 5 per cent more than the Commission originally planned, and will reduce estimated spending for 2010/11 to £219 million. This action follows the Commission’s decision in December 2009, to cut House expenditure by 9% by the end of 2012/13.” (more…)

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Fastest anti-budget protest?

22/06/2010, 07:28:29 PM

By 6pm this evening, banner-waving protesters were already massed outside Camden town hall in north London.

Surely, they must be the first to have taken to the streets against the budget?

Even more so, they won’t be last.

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Harman’s Budget Challenge, by Jonathan Todd

22/06/2010, 08:30:43 AM

The budget response is the great set-piece political challenge. Your opponent has an age to prepare and all the resources of treasury. You stand up when they sit down. By the time you sit down, the political context is virtually set, not least because your opponent’s spinners have tried to fix this. Given the centrality of economics to present politics, it is a bigger challenge than ever. Harriet Harman must rise to this as our acting leader. Which transience of tenure, of itself, reduces her potential agility compared with a permanent leader. You have to feel for her. Here are a few, hopefully helpful, suggestions.

The first task is to distinguish pragmatic economics from small-state ideology. As the need for deficit management is widely acknowledged, pragmatism is required, but only Thatcherites see this crisis as an opportunity for ideological resurgence.

The second task is to oppose the manifestations of this ideology, while the third is to provide a coherent alternative economic prospectus. This prospectus must contain tax increases and spending cuts, but the mix should reflect a very different ideology from that supported by Tory MPs agitating for a budget akin to the Thatcherite “cold shower” of the 1981 budget. Overarching all of this is the need to gain an audience in a media climate favourable to the coalition.

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The electorate gets the government it wants. Alex Norris takes it personally.

10/06/2010, 12:23:40 PM

We’re braced for cuts in Nottingham. As a city, we have rebuffed Conservative advances year after year since David Cameron’s election as leader. But with Cameron now ensconced in Number 10, we’re starting to feel the full force.

The Future Jobs Fund, which has helped 960 unemployed people back in to work in Nottingham alone, was the first to fall. Now we fear for the future of our tram expansion, an expansion set to put thousands into work, millions into the local economy and Nottingham into the picture as the UK’s leading “science city”.

I take what the coalition government is doing very personally. I’d like to voice my opposition to everything they do as loudly as possible at all times. But this is a self-indulgence we cannot afford. (more…)

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