Posts Tagged ‘future jobs fund’

Why isn’t Labour shouting about the success of the future jobs fund?

19/12/2012, 07:00:19 AM

by Dan McCurry

There was an interesting piece in The New Statesman by Rowenna Davis last week that examined the DWP report on Gordon Brown’s future jobs fund. Under this programme young unemployed people were given a guaranteed 6 months work at minimum wage and the DWP evaluation has found this policy had a net benefit to society, for each young person enrolled, of £7,750.

The writer contacted Ed Miliband’s office to ask for a view from the leader’s staff, only to be told that, “it still does nothing for those people who are in work on benefits.”

I see Ed Miliband as a man who has a great conviction that there is something deeply wrong and unjust about the system. He desperately wants to find the answer, but can’t quite put his finger on it. It’s as if it’s there, but just out of reach. It’s good to have a leader who wants to make a real difference, rather than aspiring to coast through a term in office. However, he does sometimes look like he is chasing rainbows at the expense of doing the job.

Rowenna’s experience tends to chime with a suspicion I’ve had in the past. I have an image in my mind of all the people around Ed Miliband desperately biting their knuckles, with the intense hope that they can find the answer, if only they can think deeply enough.

(more…)

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The government is failing the most vulnerable – and doesn’t care

06/01/2012, 03:03:41 PM

by Jon Trickett

At the start of the New Year most of us look forward with anticipation and hope. But there are increasingly large sectors of the population who are to some extent excluded from those aspirations and dreams. For many, the stark reality of life today is one of great uncertainty, insecurity and anxiety about what the future holds.

Here in Britain a family faces being made homeless every two minutes. Every day more children are being pushed into poverty as a direct result of the Chancellor’s policies and 5 million households are living in fuel poverty, of which half owe more than £250 to their energy supplier.

Some will argue that the increase in the numbers of people who are socially excluded is the inevitable result of the recession. But the over-riding test for any government is how well it treats the most vulnerable in society and the truth is that the coalition’s policies are making the situation worse.

And they knew that this is what they would do.

This can be the only explanation why my opposite number in the cabinet office, Francis Maude, abolished the social exclusion task force.  A deliberate, cold hearted and conscious decision to remove the coordination functions within the heart of government to lead the drive against social exclusion.

There has always been a need to address social exclusion, but in these difficult economic times with young people, pensioners and families being hit hardest, it is more important than ever not only to understand the causes of social exclusion but also to find solutions.

Of course issues surrounding social exclusion are multiple and extremely complex.  But this government’s spending cuts and tax rises are undoing much of the progress which Labour had begun to make.

The coalition seems to manifest an almost ideological drive to kick away the few existing routes out of poverty for many of the most vulnerable people. Pre-election talk of social mobility and “we’re all in it together” were unsurprisingly just part of a cynically-crafted illusion aimed at winning votes. (more…)

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How should the nation spend its windfall – the “OBR incompetence bonus”?

22/02/2011, 04:01:03 PM

The 3 members of the OBR budgetary responsibility committee, by their incompetence, have bequeathed the nation a windfall. The question surely, in which case, is how should we spend it? Restore EMA? Or the future jobs fund? Yesterday they told us we couldn’t afford to. Well today we can.

The ONS published today the level of public borrowing for the current tax year 2010/11. The OBR’s prediction was that by January, the government should be borrowing £4bn less than they did last year. Today, the figures have come out as £14bn. In fact, January was the first month since June 2008 when the government didn’t borrow.

The source of this error is the underestimation of the rise in tax receipts from the recovering economy.  This is rising at 8.4% versus the OBR’s prediction of 6.7%. Now, what’s 1.7% amongst economists?  After all, Mervyn King is running inflation 3% above his mandated rate.

However, this 1.7% is at £10bn. And that is quite a lot of money. As everyone knows, we’re facing an epidemic of youth unemployment, and restarting the future job’s fund would only cost £1bn. Re-instating educational maintenance allowance would be £1bn. And £7bn is what the government is cutting out of the welfare budget.

In fact, these errors, small as they are in economics terms, are having enormous effects on our economy and our future.

Never mind that there wasn’t a single economist that predicted the global economic crash. Forget that this is the worst global financial crisis since the 1930s, put together with the largest globally co-ordinated government fiscal and monetary intervention. How making any predictions of how the economy would perform in this backdrop wasn’t going to end up like putting be the tail on the donkey speaks volumes of the hubris of the economics profession.

The OBR’s task was always going to be difficult, but its way-off prediction of fiscal disaster has allowed this government to imperil the economic success of our future generation.

The OBR committee are their intellectual stool pigeons.

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Helen Godwin Teige warns the Tories against another lost generation

09/08/2010, 04:41:19 PM

The recent media circus surrounding the Raoul Moat case did lead to some interesting discussion about the ‘lost generation’ of working class men who have lost their standing in society as a result of the steady decline in manufacturing since the 1980s.

Numerous commentators discussed fathers and their sons who have spent much of their lives on benefits and with little or no expectation of finding work. This is an issue across the UK, though one more noticeable in the former industrial heartlands of the North, and especially former mining towns that experienced mass unemployment after the pit closures of the Thatcher years. (more…)

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